


Dying Makes One Dumb

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Ass Play, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Bottom Goro Takemura, Brain Trauma, Canon-Typical Violence, Cat Calling, Cunnilingus, Cyborgs, Deep Throating, Dirty Talk, Drug Abuse, F/M, Fellatio, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Lots of Cum, Misogyny, Multiple Orgasms, Nipple Piercings, Non-Human Genitalia, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Size Kink, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Surgery, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Tongue Piercings, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism, borg speak, drug overdose, johnny can't help but watch, sex mods, shoddy flirtations, slight exhibitionism, throat grabbing...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:00:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28540683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: Summary: Existential crises come as common as head wounds in Night City. Just as deadly too without any TTI but gettin' those preem packages are pricey. Drugs are cheaper—sex is even less eddie heavy. V doesn't wanna die. There's just too much she ain't done and too few she's done it with. Dum Dum will prolly fix that shit right up...A/N: It's criminal that Dum Dum isn't in this game more, equally criminal there's little content for him. So, here's a thing that I'm working on for thirsty fucks like myself. <3
Relationships: Dum Dum/Female V (Cyberpunk 2077), Dum Dum/V (Cyberpunk 2077)
Comments: 221
Kudos: 293





	1. Chapter 1

"Should jus' throw myself in a gang war for the fuck of it… see how long it takes to die from a thousand cuts. Tiger Claws prolly know how to do that bamboo thing… Maelstrom gets creative..."

In the corner, flipping between real and hallucination, Johnny blew out a bloom of electric-ripple smoke.

_ 'Ain't no way about it, kid. Whether I want it that way makes no difference, you're goin' down the low road. One way or another.' _

Which meant fuck all at the moment.

"Just shut the fuck up for a second! Contemplating my mortality one ion at a time over here." It would have sounded better without the sheets muffling her voice, but the bed felt like a getaway car; safe and bulletproof.

Johnny just huffed through his nose, ejecting another rich clot of nicotine. 

V ran her nails, chipped with black, through the folds in her bedsheets, rolled on her back, and glared up into the AC portholes, "Said you didn't wanna kill me, right? So quiet pushin' the buck. Gonna put iron in my mouth, and then we'll both be goulash."

_ 'Maybe when you're done with the dramatics, you'll think better about pullin' that head outta your ass. We might have options.' _

An exhausted raspberry drummed off her lips. Old gold makeup stains peeled between squints of her face—every expression drawn in like Cali fissures.  _ Glitter and gold, but still butt fuck ugly.  _

She needed a high-velocity power shower and steam clean. Maybe even wash Johnny down the drain like all the layers of sweat, dashed hopes, and blood—Jackie's blood…

_ 'I agree. You smell like shit…' _

"Haven't showered in a week… maybe longer. Could kill a complex of street rats with the shit growin' on me."

_ 'Eloquent,' _ Johnny drawls with monotone sarcasm,  _ 'Can't imagine how anyone's put up with you this long.' _

There was something to be said for that. Unconsciously, she dug fingernails up her stomach, causing a nipple to pebble around the warm gold ring. A rash of goosebumps burst down her arms shortly after.

"Heh... maybe you're right."

Maybe, without Jackie, there really wasn't any point in going on? No family… no trustworthy friends except Misty and Viktor. Those two had done plenty enough for her though, wouldn't wanna add on-call talk therapist to the long list. And Johnny really had a way of overselling her own imminent obsolescence to the point where she barely thought about anything else. 

Even sleep was just one belly flop into the engram's past. Little by little, V was starting to think less and less about the line between brash balls and Taoism flow, either from his influence or not.

Self-destruction was imminent. Why expedite the process with Misty's pills when she could throw herself headfirst into a bender of booze, drugs (uppers and downers), and illicit the affairs of the violent, sexual, and morally apprehensive? 

_ 'Been watching too many brain dances, kid. That shit doesn't fill whatever hole you got. Just gets you a body bag.' _

"Perfect. Won't even have a hole that needs fillin' soon—sooner or later, I'll be the hole."

_ 'Enough with the back and forth bullshit!'  _ Johnny groused, a cigarette half out his mouth and eyes rolled up to the ceiling, _ 'Sob story like any other. You were gonna die soon enough, with or without me, what's the problem?" _

With Jackie being replaced by Johnny, there was no one left to spout positive affirmations every time V had a morose thought. The problem was… she was grieving something sharp. Never hurt this bad before.

The fuzzy taste of nicotine over her teeth from phantom cigarettes gave her a bitter feeling deep inside. All her organic tissue winced, thinking about a dozen or so things she rarely dipped toes in. Things could get ugly fast in Night City, so she'd have to start slow.

Sex.

_ 'Ugh…' _

"... and drugs."

_ 'Wake me when you light up a smoke or huff something better than this depressing wank session, but leave me out of whatever gets your cunt wet.' _

"Fine by me, fucker…"

V stretched across the bed until a vertebra in her spine gave a muted pop. Very little ached despite everything the past few days netted her. Combination stress and mental overload probably put a dampen on physical pains from day to day mercenary work and back-breaking side gigs. Hell, regardless, a few hours of shut-eye, then a hot shower ought to categorize some thoughts fighting for dominance under skull bone. 

One blink turned into two. Slow ones followed, leaving her droopy-eyed, cold beneath the AC vents, and very much alone. Outside her window, the skyline of Watson's Night City peered in, pulsing with violet blues and the hypnotic passing of an advert blimp; it's tail several clusters of red safety lights that reminded V of simpler times. Back in the All Foods Plant—with the Maelstromers—when Jackie was just being… well, Jackie. 

_ So much for the big leagues.  _

As her thoughts dampened and smoothed out like chemical-ironed wrinkles, V imagined that job over and over again, watching the blimp pass by slowly, leaving echoes of red lights in its path. 

_ Maelstrom… _

_ Royce and that sidekick of his… that fucking spider bot... _

"Dum Dum, yeah… 'bout how I feel now," she mouthed, blaming the cyber psycho's blurry profile in her memory until she was drifting off, wondering if all was lost when they bought that bot. Shouldn't have been such a 'straight-edged princess' after all. Oughta huffed whatever that shit was he'd offered back when.

Her line of work was full of risk, but she could have taken more—should have done it all. Like, she shoulda gotten Dum Dum's deets after he threw that gaudy gun in her face. Instead, V shook off the inkling of a night on the town with a Maelstromer (especially that one), deeming the whole thing too hazardous. Jackie had called her a cherry and slapped her back, only proving his point when she'd sputtered a nonsensical excuse. 

_ Fuck _ , she missed that choom…

V needed to dull the pain—needed a BD in apathy an' a fuckcan of smash… or some blue glass. Let her own stress hormones morph and put her into blissful catatonia.

Another image of that borg-hole teased at her memory, like a fucking morsel of good, bad, and ugly. Even now, if she wanted to float above the city skyline, there was no reason to hit up any of those chrome-pimped psychopaths.

Plenty of dealers in Night City; one spider-eyed Dum Dum wasn't necessary to get zoomed. She personally knew several slingers on Jig-Jig Street alone.

Yet—

_ 'Don't even think about it, kid.' _

"Fuck off."

Maelstromers knew how to ascend to another plane entirely, and Dum Dum kept dissecting her thoughts with ripper-like accuracy. Best case, he'd get her loaded into oblivion. Worst case scenario, she'd end up gorillafucked in some XBD for sick shits with too much disposable income. Either way, it was better than Johnny Silverhand slowly suffocating her consciousness until there was nothing—nada—left.

Outside, another ad blimp passed by, displaying the last heated clip of Watson's Whore with a gleeful edge.

_ Need some sleep,  _ V thought, hating how cigarette-rough her inner voice was beginning to sound—how much Johnny was already melted inside her.  _ Fuck that, too… straight to the dankest gutter hole in Atlanta… _

V slept several times, all microdoses of sleep, leaving her staring out the window, imagining how alive the city was while she died slowly inside. 

Eventually, the sulking got under her skin faster than Johnny could berate her, though his bored silhouette followed her—always leaning up against a wall with hanging arms and a groan in his throat. 

V thumbed  _ play _ on her radio, drowning out the obnoxious grumble beneath doses of neo death metal. She threw her clothes in a pile by the toilet, shaking off the urge to hide from the engram's eyes, which might as well be her eyes. His. Hers.. all the same soon…

_ 'Finally. If I had to deal with the leaky shit you call thoughts any longer, I was gonna tear myself outta your skull.' _

"Trust me, your memories ain't a bowl of fucking fruit either."

_ 'Whatever you say,' _ another phantom creep of nicotine flooded her sinuses.

Sometimes, after long stints spent on a gig, taking a shower was better than the warm glow of hard-earned eddies—better than the best sex. Despite Johnny being there but not there, this was better than that. So good, V slumped down the plastic tile wall to the hot, wet floor, drenched in the jelly-bone feeling of burning water and an empty head.

She idled there, massaging one-handed at ribs that were yellowing with bruises. V charted a lazy path downward, over her stomach to her mound where a thin stretch of wet, trimmed hair met her fingernails. It'd been a long time since she had any kind of body high… since way back before Jackie died. Whether it be drugs or something else, V needed something to feel alive...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little more grime and fantasies in Night City.
> 
> Also, big thanks to DannyPhantom619, stroma, emdashesnsemicolons, and Cuttlebooper for their wonderful comments. <3

Slow-motion tunes gather off in the distance, mazed off by rain, traffic, and the errant pop of gunfire. It's Maelstrom territory, which makes the text she's looking at slightly less exciting than it could be—shouldn't be. 

V takes a reedy breath as thunder rolls in off the docks and over slick Night City streets, pigtailing anxiety-like chained explosions. The fine hairs on the back of her neck still stand on edge, goosebumps growing down her arms and legs. 

** Straight-edged Princess! Taken DOOM DOOM for a spin yet?  **

** Wanna see what you do with it.  **

Her heart usually doesn't beat this fast for anyone except gonks with guns in her face; even then, she's generally less dorphed out than this.

Another text comes through, pumping blood straight down her spine. Further down, it goes and further still.

** Send some spatter shots, yeah. **

Heat tickles beneath her belt buckle, warming her pussy up for a fucking pipe dream—a fantasy she could prolly fix with the right BD. It's stupid and naive, and V thought she was past this bullshit. Also, when did Dum Dum get her digits? And from whom? 

Maybe it was mixed in with the leftover data on that Militech chit...

V's only as mad as her madness dictates, which ain't much, since the rest of her thoughts have already detoured down rabbit holes filled with pill mills and borg-cock. Despite the creeping feeling that she's got red optics on her position, her mouth feels dry, parched. No one is really out of sight in Maelstrom territory.

_ 'Jesus fucking Christ.'  _ Johnny groans.

Her thumb hovers over the keys on her phone, wondering what she'd even say in response and, more importantly, why she even cares.

_ 'When's the last time you got some dick, kid? Some fuckin' Maelstrom borg-hole getting your panties wet looks bad on both of us…' _

"Can't be helped," she says, unwilling to start another argument by lying to him, as if he doesn't know every fucked up thought tail-chasing in her mind: synthetic knit-flesh covered in the fallout of her own blood, chrome teeth bleeding, smiling, hips snapping hard—hard enough to break through walls regrown from too many busy nights and not enough fun. 

V shudders there in the bucket seat of her Quadra, waiting for two gangbangers to get done fucking a joytoy… rattled with thoughts of getting docked by that junkie cyborg.

Being alone didn't come naturally to V and right now, a night sending Dum Dum snaps of murdered Tiger Claws feels more intimate than it should. 

It's all Jackie's fault… 

Sitting in silence was a foreign concept. Life lived the way she'd done meant even when she wanted a little peace, she got none. Which meant feeling lonely was a thing she knew existed, figured she'd even felt it from time to time, and could see in others, but now—right now—it was like some raw BD stapled to her face.

In the passenger seat, clouds of nicotine-soaked carcinogens surround Johnny's choppy figure. He hasn't stopped starin' at her at any point since she got the first text from the cyborg. Hasn't said a word since she openly admitted to her own inner depravity just now; not a blip of static since. 

Now—now she wants him to say something, anything, even somethin' shitty. Just enough to snap her out of this blue-blanket of red despair. Bitch of it was, motherfucker was the only one that knew how she felt and why, but he just kept on looking, ignoring in a way that hurt the most.

"Seven more minutes," she breathes, refocusing on this gig with an ache that won't go away. 

Moisture gathers across the inside pane of the windshield in reaction to her core temperature rising. Her eyes trace rain shapes and out-of-focus cars, finally lingering on some resin residue. Crap was leftover from the glass repair Jackie's guy did after the Corpo shootout during the All Foods Plant job. The sight of it only feeds that empty, weighty ache of loneliness. 

_ 'Seven damn minutes... Starving for a fuck so bad you can smell the jizz from here, huh?' _

"No," she pockets her phone—old-tech—and wrings her hands around the steering wheel until the burn does something to the pit in her chest, "Deets mentioned our guy is obsessed with Milfguard. Never misses an episode."

_ 'Little late for primetime, isn't it?' _ There's a smirk of infallible logic there, nestled between clots of smoke that really grinds her gears.

"Reruns start at three-fifteen." 

A crackle of thunder rattles the shoddy work done by Jackie's friend, distorting the outside world for a moment. V swallows a leak of misery and arousal then continues, "We wait until his holoscreen pings the network. It shouldn't be long now. Guys not known for being chatty with joytoys."

Two minutes pass by, her phone pressing hot in her side pocket. 

A streak of lightning brightens the Northside skyline like iridescent mold spores climbing from building to building. Putrid but pretty.

_ 'Get me when something interesting happens…' _

V doesn't look over—doesn't care to find Johnny Silverhand gone. She feels his aura fade, anyway; a forlorn warmth of activity shutting down, leaving more weight in her gut where stomach acid pools. 

Beneath her ripped tank, her stomach grumbles. When was the last time she ate anything?

Yes, time has passed since she last contemplated Misty's pills. Johnny's got a loose plan to keep them from melting into one, but even still, this raw consumption isn't for food… 

She closes her eyes as the clock runs, picturing compact cybernetic skeleton-strength folding her in half, neck pinned to the wall, cheeks ballooning red, cunt being stretched and vibrated with borg-cock sharp as nitinol… hot as molten chrome.

V knows she'll need something after this side gig—something to release this tension, whether with Dum Dum's cock or his drugs. The chrome-stuffed gonk reached out to her for some reason. There's enough gore with Maelstromer's morning coffee that he wouldn't need her for snuff shots. Man's more cyborg than human, but he can't be much different from all the others. 

Hopefully, he's thinking about her cunt in the same way she is about that dick… and if not… blue glass and smash will have to do. 

Three-fifteen hits, and she's turning off the engine and throwing the side door open. 

Needles of cold rain pepper the shorn side of her head, riding the curve of her neck beneath her jacket.

The rain is sobering, almost enough to push back the vile things she wants done to her under the pretense of companionship. For now, the desire is on the back burner, but reckless want still plagues her in other ways. Even now, her first thought is to hike up the three-story slum and kick the door down, but she's got no real way of knowin' how many are in there, only that the joytoy said his appointment was with two gonks. Two gonks can quickly become more with the proper calls. These gangbangers liked gangbangs after all, and her mind wasn't her own anymore. Clearing out a room of Tiger Claws used to be easy eddies, but these days she's lucky to focus on anything more than the relic's bullshit.

Around the edge of her car, pin-like red lights gleam off water-glass reflections—a shiver, not attached to the rain, ripples down her back. Eyes are on her, but the adrenaline is too hot to pay mind to some Maelstrom stalker, even if slim chances mean it's Dum Dum doin' the stalking.

With water dripping between her lips, V pops the trunks. The streets look dead and empty between sheets of rain and Kiroshi optics, but that doesn't mean anything when Maelstrom Red Eye mods are commonplace.

Inside her trunk, Doom Doom looks up at her from a pile of silver-cotton shirts. She hates how much she's fallen in love with a DR5 Nova hybrid, not to mention how it's previous owner seems to know that little fact… but…

"Whatever," she scoffs, licking rain off her gold lips. V grabs the gun, shoves it down the back of her pants, and zips her platinum jacket. A farewell 'adiós' to the car begins the countdown to payday and an end to Umemoto's seedy, short-lived existence. 

As expected, Johnny materializes against Bono Budget Domiciles' entrance, leaning against a cluster of Cerberus graffiti without a care to be had. 

The rain slithers off his aviators as if he's really there—genuine and not just in her head.

_ 'Try not to get yourself killed in there. Be a shame to come all this way just to get gunned down 'cause your foaming like a bitch in heat.' _

"Appreciate the 'good luck' there, Johnny. Maybe wait in the car, have a cigarette, jerk one out while I'm gone. Might put your ass in a better mood…"

A slow, almost-ancient smirk curls his face, leaving something like the chill of a ghost over her skin. Why'd he have to go and do creepy shit like that? 

V shakes her head—droplets flying off purple-dyed strands—as Johnny shows off his pearly teeth. She steps beneath the entrance, out of the rain, feeling like a woman beyond her years, only to take an aluminum baseball bat to the back of the head. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bust out the welcome mat, fellow thirst cadets, Dum Dum is in the house.
> 
> Big thanks to charlesdances, Tealicious, MsTerror, Eshacchi, and Katargo for their wonderful comments. <3

Pain—lights and nothingness…

Time passes like heartbeats—minutes leak down the back of her skull. Drip, drip, drip… until V realizes she's awake and stripped down to her skivvies, staring down the length of a stained baseball bat like it's a road to nowhere. 

"... fuck," she rolls in her mouth, tasting copper.

"Fuck's right, cunt. Fuck's you think scalpin' our heat, huh?"

V blinks away sticky tears—blood, maybe—and spits out a shard of a chipped tooth. A lick across her front teeth says she'll need an implant when this is all over. That's not worrying when a gun cocks to her right, though. 

She expects a neon coat of arms and nylon-leather with slicked pompadours that smell like whale oil but faces a chaotic structure of iconic Red Eye opticals and lower jaw mods. The three—no, four—Maelstromers stare at her with apathetic malice and chrome-grill glee, jittering on their heels. 

The air stinks of dorph fumes and synthetic, boiled blood. It doesn't look much better than it smells, but it's not typical of a budget cube… more like a headquarters burrowed out of a whole floor.

"Look…" she says with a whistle, pausing to grimace as a borg giggles, "You guys gotta be mixin' me up with some  _ other _ streetrat. I'm just here to flatline a Tiger, comprende?"

"Pussy's dead, bitch," says one from the back—a guy with no lower jaw, speaking instead through a modified audio output and cooling wires. His metal mohawk catches the light of another Maelstromer beside him, whose optics are swiveling in their chassis, staring at her.

V cuts her eyes over the leering borg-hole, "Thought you metal-dicks weren't into fleshy girls? Keep lookin' fucker, and you'll need a corpo ripper to fix the hole in your crotch."

All of them burst into laughter, mixes of tech-heavy vocal filters and masculine rust. It's all as humiliating as it is infuriating, but V's less worried about 'implications,' given the way she left things off with Royce than she usually would be in this situation. Not that she's untouchable or anything, but Royce didn't have it in for her… and that meant something among the grunts… hopefully.

The one with the baseball bat finally lowers it, resting it on a naked shoulder before clicking his pierced tongue at the one with his gun trained on her cheek, "Lookin' like we got our next BD star, ya think?"

"Thinkin' yeah—yeah. Imma go first."

"Like fuck you are!" Growls the hungry one, Red Eyes churning erratically. 

Somewhere amidst the bickering over XBD rape and snuff, a ping goes off. It's a subtle sound—almost soft—but they all go quiet and turn towards a pile of clothes—her clothes. Beneath Doom Doom, in her rumpled street pants, is her phone, chiming with a new alert… text by the sound of it.

"... the hell is that?" 

The gun lowers, and two Maelstromers fish around in her clothes until the one with the spiked mohawk lifts up her phone, turning it around in a cybernetic gorilla fist, confused at first, then chuckles.

"Dirty tech—old-ass, ancient dirt. Check this shit out."

He tosses it to the one that whacked the back of her head in, smooth and precise. The gang grunt's optics flash over the screen, using a plastic-padded thumb to scroll through her feed. 

Several moments pass with nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat and two belts unbuckling—another minute seems to go by before the one with her phone shoves away an encroaching Maelstromer with pants dangled halfway off his hips. "Hang tight, Boomer."

V wets her lips, tasting adrenal-salt, and old rain. She tugs, for the first time, against the cuffs holding her wrists to the bottom legs of the chair, wondering if… if maybe he sees—

"This 'ganic bitch's got Dum Dum's deets…"

"Seriously?" Several of them mimic. 

The one with his pants hanging off his murder-erection snarls, throwing his shoulders down, fists balled up like the end to this dingy rape set was gonna ruin his whole week.  _ Hopefully, it does _ , she thinks vehemently, glaring at each and every Maelstromer as the alpha of their lil' group tells 'em all not to fuck with her for now.

As the silent pondering of gonks grows on her nerves like a hot wire, V rattles her wrists and the cuffs, throwing a fuming look to the room of testosterone and chrome. There's several ways to play this lapse in danger, so she goes with the first shit that pops into her head.

"Better be careful. Wouldn't wanna think twice about tearing Dum Dum's personal pussy toy up for some XBD." 

Two of them shift on their feet, shoulders hunched forward like fuck gremlins.

With a smile that wobbles, she adds, "Could land you boys in real hot water, huh? Messin' up his property and all that. So, how's about you get me out of this chair, let me put my fucking clothes back on, and—hey, maybe I'll keep these cock suckin' lips sealed?"

Baseball bat borg tosses the phone in her pile of belongings, only to scoff a string of electric expletives, "You ain't no fuckin' joytoy, tho couldn't tell from looking at ya. Them bitches don't carry Maelstrom heat like Doom Doom."

He turns to the other three, opticals blinking red, "Looks like she's that merc from All Foods. Lucky 'ganic girl that got a present for double crossin' Militech."

"Yo, Rat!" A nod to the mohawk one with the lower jaw wires and voice box, "Get rid o' those handcuffs and stick her with a hypo. Won't want that brain bleed goin' on much longer."

Before she can open her mouth, one of them punches a hypo in her naked stomach, flushing her full of antibodies and coagulants. 

A whimper wiggles out between her teeth—the pains revolting, but slowly… and surely, something not standard hypo-guts enters her bloodstream. It could be dorph, but this shit hits her like a mellow morning sunrise; the kinda pretty pinks only seen outside the city limits.

Her whimper becomes a moan and a smile, then she's shaking it off when a couple of them start chuckling darkly. 

"Really 'preciate the hospitality, boys…" she drones sarcastically, dragging her heavy arms away once the cuffs are gone, rubbing at the cold contact of their borg fingers like a burn. Course she's not put off by their cyber ware, far from it, but there's nothing quite like being on the cusp of getting fucked dead by cyberpsychos to make one wary of chrome.

The one with the bat shuffles for a moment, leaning from side to side like he's assessing some runt on the streets, before peering with that shiny grill, "We're nice when we wanna be, ain't that right?" 

The question is addressed to the rest of them but only answered with skulking looks despite their iconic facial mods. 

_ 'Really thought they were gonna spit roast you for a moment there, huh? Could feel your bladder gettin' all jittery. Figure these guys might've liked that…' _

"Probably," she grits out.

The Maelstromer grins, handing her a bundle of her clothes. They all watch her pull her pants on, staring hungrily at unmixed flesh and meat as she covers it up sluggishly, stumbling from whatever downer was in that hypo. Borg-holes are all against the weakness of the flesh, but once it's vulnerable—ready for a vigorous dock or four—they act like pussy-starved roaches. It's unbecoming. It's more than a little off-putting, but these are gangs, and they all operate dark nooks… 

V's phone chimes again in her pocket, but she's too high to see who it is—too high to care. Shit like that can be dealt with later, even if it's Jones with an update on the Umemoto gig. 

When they hand her back Doom Doom, the thought crosses her mind to flatline them all. 

She's killed her fair share of 'em… mostly cyberpsychos, but still. Would Royce have her scalp for protecting her own hide? V knows Dum Dum wouldn't mind. He liked her style, and that involved zeroing anyone that fucked with her—these gonks for sure fit the bill, but one of them pops her open a can of Spunky Monkey as if she's just one of the groupies. The gesture makes her second guess bloodshed.

Still, the DR5 Nova hybrid in her hand shakes. 

To be ravaged, tortured, used, sliced open, and sold was a threat Night City wore like a badge of honor; not uncommon, but V has to work hard to keep the tremble out of her voice.

"So, all obvious awkwardness about the XBD shit aside," she swallows down bile, another moan and the odor of not-there nicotine from Johnny, "... why'd you guys zero Umenmoto? He wasn't on any Maelstrom hit lists, was he?"

The bat guy shakes his head, servos in his spine humming, "Jus'cause you ain't touchable, don' mean we gotta spill shit. Netpigs ain't welcome in Maelstrom territory. Simple as that."

Hard to think Tiger Claws would have Netwatch in their ranks unless they were bought and paid for. Usually, solos like that lived in better conditions, but the fucker was dead, and that's all that really mattered. She coulda used that scratch, but the gig wasn't busted if the end result was the same.

"Fine, point me to the exit, and I'll-"

"Nah—Nah, we ain't letting meat go without checkin' the expiration date. Park your ass on that couch!" 

Several Red Eye optics twist to the stained sofa. The baseball bat bounces against his thigh; a lovely lil' promise if she mouths off.

Something leaks in the crotch of her skivvies; it could be urine but feels too much like arousal, merely in preparation for the possibility this shit isn't over. Doom Doom is back between hip and belt, but four chrome-heavy Maelstromers and this cloudy, dream-like high won't win her any fights.

Despite fuming, V sits down slowly on the edge of the sofa, palms on her knees, gripping the fabric there to stop from shaking. Her head is spinning—her body's on fire… crackling and sweating. 

The one with the gun turns his head to the right—one eye mod going blue—then tips his chin up and grins, "Dum Dum!"

The warmth grows...

"Pussy Hands job came with a surprise. Got a joytoy-lookin' merc bitch here with yur heat."

V swallows, feeling Doom Doom growing warm over her pelvis. Heartbeats rack her throat, rattling resolve that oughta be there but isn't—only barely. When the borg’s smirk drops, so does her heart.

"... yeah, yeah. Preem, purple on one side. Real 'ganic lookin' too," it's said with both disgust and thirst, "Mhm, sure. Yeah… we'll hold the lil' cunt for ya jus—seriously?" 

He sneers, turning brilliant, blue box-eye mods over her like she just pissed in his ride, "Sure. Whatever."

The call drops and Red Eye optics light back up. Gun owner mutters something smothered in playback skips, only for the Maelstromer with the bat to bark up, "He know 'er or what?"

"Knows her, yeah. Said she's a Straight-edged Princess. Ain't no bleedin' cunt neither, he says. Fucking ‘ganic docker."

One in the back with his loose belts and a bulge quips back with a puffed out chest, "Like you ain't been smuggling steel since we stripped her down…"

"Fuck you!"

The air turns volatile, but she can handle it now—now that Dum Dum's confirmed her status, whatever that may be, amongst his fellow gang members.

"Gentlemen," V coos, taking a sip of the lukewarm Spunky Monkey from the cushion wedges, all nice and slow like. It's hard to remember the last time she felt this good… this relaxed and fuckin' free. "How about something a little harder while I wait?" 

She flashes real teeth and feels bass waving in her chest as they all stare, dumbfounded. "It's been a hot minute since I got dorphed outta my skull… an' I'm liking this hypo junk."

_ 'Figures this is how it's gonna be. Second they take their finger off the trigger you're already barkin' orders,' _ Johnny watches from a stack of plastic containers with amusement,  _ 'Gotta say, it beats the waterworks.' _

"I wanna get fucked up," she bites at Johnny, but it's the Maelstromer that was so eager to rape her to death earlier that hisses gleefully and drags an inhaler out of his back pocket.

By the time Dum Dum shows up, shoving a Maelstromer out of his way, V's lounging across the sofa, inhaler between her teeth. Doom Doom's been a warm slab across her stomach for the better half of an hour.

She rolls her eyes to the side, smoke curling from her lips, and lengthens her body into a long, delicious stretch. Two out of four of the original borg lot are watching her from the corner of the room, arms crossed while the other regains his balance. 

Dum Dum grumbles something like a hiss of steam and kicks the fourth chrome-fuck that's still laying comatose across the oily carpet. Red Eye Spider opticals analyze his prone gang member with a curled lip. Another stiff kick only gets a grunt out of the borg-hole who thought it was so wise to try his hands at finger fucking her while she was nodding off. After the first concussive blast from Doom Doom, the rest scattered… oddly unwilling to defend their choom.

A slow, raspy whistle comes from Dum Dum, pulling her hazy attention off the body.

"Preem," he snarls, "Real preem, yeah… knew I liked your style."

"Hmm," V voices, nearly too dorphed to articulate a good response, but something comes out. "Better than… spatter shots."

Dum Dum's lips curl upwards, pulling stiff laugh lines up into a vast, chrome-toothed grin, "Shame he ain't dead… but shit's impressive. Dummy knockout rounds: eight-point-three millimeter rubber pellet with heat contact stun technology. Jus' like 'ganic solos to take the doom outta Doom Doom."

_ 'This is the borg-cock you wanna ride? Think I'm gonna hurl…" _

V smiles with the inhaler still between her teeth; she takes another puff off it and tosses the canister down between her legs. 

"This thing ricochets…” she continues, easing the Nova hybrid upward, muzzle pointing to the ceiling, “sloppy stuff if my eddies come from takin' just one bourgey down."

_ 'Could have flatlined them all.' _

She blinks lazily out at the room filled with body heat, warm cyberware, and fumes, red opticals illuminating the haze in the air like neon clouds. Somethin' real dark crosses Dum Dum's face, but it's hard to tell what's real when everything's swirling. Rockerboy Johnny in the corner only shakes his head, blowing out a cloud of smoke in mild disappointment, adding something otherworldly to the hypnotic atmosphere.

Silence washes over her like an anxious poison. It could be the drugs—drugs and that sticky ache she tried to leave back in the car earlier cause the poison settles down in her groin with each second that passes… and each moment where all Dum Dum does is breathe and stare.

"... your boys drugged me," she whispers, feelin' the peak of her last hit making her loose, "Gonks stuck me with homemade hypo shit. Cherry popped... but," a deep, lusty breath, "takes more than that to get in my pants."

For a moment, the cyborg looks like he's gonna pull iron on her—cock or gun, she doesn’t know—but his darkness softens, replaced with a slow smirk, "That right? Hell'uvah rush ain't it? Preem chems. Means yur legit enough. Not anyone gets preferential treatment."

Dum Dum points at her like she might've forgotten who he was talking to. Disassociation hasn't happened yet, but V knows it could dawn on her any moment considering Maelstrom drugs' strength.

Her tongue moves without thinking, "Preferential treatment means stripped down and cuffed to a chair, huh? That how you guys treat your friends these days?"

Dum Dum casts a tight look at the three Maelstromers standing around the room. None of them say a word, but all of them start twitching, fingers jerking, and body language unnerved.

With an added chrome-weight of about one-fifty, Dum Dum steps over the body in the middle of the floor, smothering her vision with an unbuckled flak jacket and an exposed titanium sternum plate. Even swallowed by drugs, her eyes still, focusing in on the near-leather-like seams between mods and silver scar tissue running down his arms and chest. Her tongue tingles, wondering if she could flatten it enough to get each dichotic flavor of man and machine in one lick.

"Lose yur lunch, yet?" He asks her, all seriously n' shit.

"Bitch's fine," the one with the bat grunts, "No pukin' no dilation, no nuthin’... 'cept some attitude. One whack did it."

"Sure," Dum Dum hisses—static rasping over a wet chromed larynx—then, after crouching down low, finally at eye level, he asks with a pointed grin, "How 'bout it, princess. Feelin' up for a little gig or we takin’ you for a drive to our ripperdoc?"

V's almost—only almost—too enthralled by his Red Eye optics and savory sweat to wrap her limited functions around his question, but then she sees eddie signs and grins back, that lonely shell of ice beginning to finally melt.

"How much we talkin' here?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which V makes her way to Totentanz, despite Takemura's best haiku yet...
> 
> Big thanks to Tealicious, Katargo, TrashPanduh, TheLadyTheBeast, MsTerror, PiSeule, Luna, and DarthFucamus for their wonderful comments. They mean a bunch as I get back into writing after a 3-month dry spell. And... speaking of dry spells...

Jittery energy makes each breath feel fragile. The odor of brine and tossed plastic waste doesn't help, nor does the damp chill in the air. V wonders if the weight still sitting in her chest will take her to the bottom of the docks if she just… lets go of the railing and falls backward. 

Luckily for Arasaka's legacy, Takemura arrives in an inconspicuous ride just in time, acting about as relaxed as a corpo on synthcoke, but the tensions are all in the aura, not in the jitters. V throws him a short wave, pressing her ass down to keep her balance on the railing. No time to fall into the water and never surface again just yet. After this impromptu meeting, she's got a date with a Red Eye Spider optics borg-hole.

Dum Dum didn't give her detail on the gig he was offering, or… perhaps he did, but V was too dorphed outta her mind to remember. Many things happened that night, the least of which was some sort of mutual interest, passed between the two of them. 

"I see no vehicle," Takemura notices, expression as constipated as ever, "Were you followed?"

"Out here?" She almost, only almost, laughs, "They don't even bother dumping bodies out this far, ya know. Think we're safe to talk shop."

"Please, this is serious, V."

_ 'Yeah, didn't your mama ever teach you it's rude to disrespect your elders, though, in this case, you could do the world a favor and zero this Samurai.' _

"I'm aware," V says to both of them, but it's only Takemura that nods in reply.

They exchange formalities, which she's come to realize is essential to the older man, but once the pleasantries are over, the matters at hand enter the spotlight; words of _sabotage_ , _Hanako_ _Arasaka_ , _parade_ _floats_ , and more cross both their lips. The Japanese man mentions netrunners and snipers, which reinvigorate V's mood like the dorph and smash had the night with Maelstrom. She's better in this element, not in her apartment weeping over what-could-have-been and all the dick she never got—better here than on that sofa huffing chemicals into mid-morning.

Goro Takemura pauses amidst their conversation, staring out across the docks as the cityscape's reflection baths across rippling water like a voodoo man's omen. A moment of seriousness passes between them as barges bring in props for the Arasaka parade. 

If she's going to get rid of Johnny, she'll need to up her game, and while Takemura wants different things out of this, the path there is the same. They need each other, and while her insides twist for a disgusting borg with chrome teeth, V finds the Arasaka corpo growing on her. Even if their goals were not the same, she doesn't think she'd mind working with him. 

"So," she exhales, breathing in the married smells of Night City like it'll cleanse her palate, "what time do we meet up for this shit?"

"Arasaka parade is two days from now. I will be in touch."

Takemura turns to her as she drinks in the night, feeling both full and empty. There's something he wants to say, but whether he asks or decides to crawl back in his ride is as predictable as what awaits them in two days.

"... you seem," he begins in a zen rasp, " _ different _ than last time we met."

_ 'Gonna tell 'im you partied with Maelstrom? That you're too focused on borg-dick to take any of his shit seriously?'  _ Johnny is leaning with his elbows over the railing beside her, wearing the smug grin of an asshole, but he's not wrong…

V assumes he's referring to her getup and the makeup; gold lips and smokey cat eyes lined in red-leaf. She adjusts the leather studded bra between open zips of a flashy windbreaker the color of murdered crows and gives the older man a look, "I guess I'll take that as you sayin' I clean up well, huh?"

For a moment, the ex-Arasaka bodyguard refuses to look away from the skyline. All it takes is a shift of her waist, turned toward him on display for his black-blue eyes to twist over cleavage and naked abdominals. 

"You do," he says flatly, his gaze quickly returning on Night City, "but that is not what I meant. You were contemplating ending your life due to the Relic's power, yet... tonight, your mood has changed. Why is this?"

V shrugs, dancing around materialistic reasons that are more obvious than the real ones buried deeper.

"I've been coming to terms with some things: existential crisis sorta stuff. Might be treading some rocky waters, but it's nothing I can't handle." That's a lie, but she's not suicidal anymore—just hot and bothered and needing some release… one way or a fucking ‘nother.

"Hazardous nighttime. How a dusty, sharp road hides, because of the knife…"

V blinks, turns, and stares, lifting a brow, "What?—what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Night City is dangerous. People here have no honor. They are like the rat that feeds on their own. It truly is troubling."

"Hmph," she half-scoffs, smelling rain in the distance, "This city is like any other, just bigger than most. Can't tell me Japan is any better."

Takemura looks down and then away, off in the opposite direction her eyes are still skimming—neon trails of advertisements and pollution—but he sees the same thriving hell hole she does. 

"Perhaps," he sighs, "you are not wrong. In any case, I wish you safety until we meet again. I will… be in touch."

Distant police sirens come and go, followed by scattering shots of gunfire and something like a scream. 

"Take it easy," V calls behind her, not moving until Takemura is coasting away towards the Industrial Plaza, probably somewhere back in the heart of Watson where it's safer than most places. 

Chills from before return, but all she needs to do is walk through the north tunnel to where she parked Jackie's motorcycle and head to Totentanz. A job will take her mind off shit if the club itself won't—if Dum Dum doesn't. Besides, if she sits here—alone—much longer, she'll find an excuse to drag her ass to Misty's instead of whatever awaits her at the city's most brutal mosh. Business there is never simple, but Dum Dum seemed more than eager to have her do this gig with him. Stuff like that should throw up a million red flags, but it doesn't… not like it should, at least.

The other night didn't involve much but passing inhalers of dorph back and forth, marveling at the shapes that came outta the walls as they got further and further locked into a d-hole. Maybe they talked about flatlining, BDs, music too and—flowers rang a bell—but that wasn't all…

V does remember making a desperate sound when something rough and cold stroked her neck. Dum Dum's breath felt hot, mixed with the fumes, but it was his cybernetic hand that traced her skin like nails before grabbing tight the second her mind started to slip. She remembers his tensile strength pinching arteries every time she began to nod off, tearing her focus off hallucinations and back on him—recalls the way he jerked her close… close enough her nipples ached against the uneven valleys of his bicep. Yet… it wasn't ever close enough. 

There'd been something sharp in his optics as if he couldn't figure out where the jack-in port in her skull was—as if the slim seam of her own mods was too faint for him to feel anything but stiff and sadistic.

That morning, she had to check the tightness of her pussy to rest assure she hadn't been fucked or raped that night. In hindsight, it was more than reckless to get so hazed with borgs like them, even if she had some weird pact with Dum Dum.

Especially since she'd have bent over for it without a word.

Those fingers… so cold and sharp—opticals too many and too aware with far too many ways to categorize her vitals and mods, knowing right where she was hot and pulsing; everything about it made her feel more than naked. Stripped, skinned, and devoured.

V blinks, wondering where her mind is actually going. 

For a second, she glares out at Watson, Night City like it's the cancer eating at her brain, but that's just Johnny, and he's disappeared to the edge where he'll be better off. 

Tonight, she's got a date with Dum Dum…

Totentanz looks as unassuming as any defunct hovel in Watson's City Center, but a few chrome, blood-lit glares give it away. Two Maelstrom gang members linger, blowing out tufts of either smoke or fumes while they talk shop to a joytoy with a Skeleton, neon-pink leg mod. The stark shades of scaling red add a beacon to the night-dark tower. It stands like a monolith sucking the specks of bluish-green light pollution from the sky. Even from outside, despite there being no sound, V thinks the bass of Tinnitus can be felt in her feet.

_ 'Gonna stand out here all night, or get this junkie out of your system?'  _ Johnny falls into form like pixel-sliced rain, arms crossed by the ajar entrance; the sign _ -otel _ in red stutters noisily above the arch. 

"... now or never," she whispers under her breath, stepping inside where it's understandably warmer—the air thick with electricity and bouncing ions. Already, her head hurts.

_ 'Could always change your mind, ya know. Take a few hundred of these low life's out while they're hopped up on Blue Glass and lace. It'd be easy.' _

V ignores him once she's in the elevator, close to pressing the lift key when a drunk Maelstromer with a steel chassis of spikes for a face stumbles in, banging off the opposite grating.

The noise rattles her more than she'd have liked.

"Totenzzzzz," comes an audiophile-sounding demand.

"... tazzzz'zit that shit bab'eeeeeee—" a burp interrupts his static dial-tone, but he doesn't continue, just throws an arm up at the lift key, swaying silently in the high of intoxicants. She's never seen any mods like that—where there might be nothing organic above the neck but brain… except what she glimpsed in Evelyn's BD of Adam Smasher. Cyberware that extreme carried an eighty-percent chance of dissociation and a forty-five for cyberpsychosis. Risk always seemed too high to V, but then again… she’ll probably have the least visible mods in Totentanz.

"Sure thing, buddy," V mumbles, sealing her fate with a two-finger button press.

Floor by floor, bass growing and growing, the overclocked fumes of cyberware and sweaty skin flood into the moving box until V feels half-mad. The borg beside her wobbles, swaying near enough she can smell the sour-tones of masculine sweat, ruined into a soupy fragrance by all the synth blood coursing through his mods. At the last second, he catches himself on the grated wall behind her. There's something about the setting—the anticipation—that's putting her on edge. Usually, she'd be confident enough to stand with someone at her back, but V finds herself slowly moving to the corner of the elevator, posture relaxed, but peripherals aware of the towering figure across from her.

_ 'One less waste of air if you just zero him now. This is the place where it’s considered good manners to pop someone, right?' _

V shakes her head, taking a deep breath of wet chrome, old sex, drugs, and pulsating sound waves. The elevator doors grind open as she's exhaling—as the borg is swinging from edge to edge out onto the dance floor.

Totentanz is an imploding supernova; red creatures jump along the ceiling to the whomping beat of Tinnitus. Ruby high beams throw living shadows over every surface, making the walls feel sentient and ravenous. About twelve feet away, near a lounge area stained in vomit, a couple fuck against the wall; they’re a mixture of cybernetic limbs, metal mohawks and damp lips. There's more going on in the middle of the dance pit from the rich, ripe smell of synthetic sex, but it's those lost in the music that seem to create a massive sentient organism.

V breaths in again, ignoring the violent grunting mounting in intensity to her right, and reaches for her phone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Totentanz is loud...
> 
> Big thanks to TrashPanduh, Mitch0_o, Katargo, SantaMuertita, TheLadyTheBeast, ForGodsSake, SlapItOnABiscuit, and AveriaC for their awesome comments. It's been a blast so far. <3

"Look who finally showed up," a metallic rasp pushes between hypnotic beats and an orgy of voices. 

V releases her phone, nestled in her jacket pocket, and turns on a heel, expecting Dum Dum but finds not only him but several Maelstrom lackeys hovering around him, leaning, squatting, and starring from the blind spot right outside the elevator. She'd straight-up walked past them…

"Shoulda known you'd be late," Dum Dum continues, more amused than annoyed though the serrated iron grinding across his vocal cords could keep anyone guessing, "Dorph cherry gets popped, and suddenly you 'ganics get lost on the edge. Hopefully, this means Princess got 'er beauty rest."

"That what you've been worried about the past twenty-four hours? My beauty rest?" She throws him a flirtatious smile before she can help herself. Ever since that night, V's been having a hard time remembering half of what occurred between then and now. No chilling, she knows that much.

"Naw, been busy." He says flippantly. 

For a moment, V doesn't know how to respond to that.

Then, slowly, something unpleasant, like the remnants of fear or remorse, lean into the corners of his face. It only catches V's attention for a moment before the electronic doors beside him squeal closed, jolting her eyes to the elevator. Inches of stainless steel slowly draws to a close, rattling back down to bring up another lost soul.

Dum Dum hits an inhaler of dorph hard, releasing a font of fumes towards her. His lips twitch into a malicious smile, spread in a colossal chrome grin by the time the miasma clears.

"Don' worry," he gestures past the field of bodies to the stage behind her, "noise'll give you a rush any minute now. Headache won't last long."

"Never said it bothered me." It's been a while since V's felt awkward, even longer since it's shown in her voice. She even bites her gold-painted lower lip like some bennie when Dum Dum's grin drops. Try as she might not to, her arms fold over her bare stomach as if to shields the dragon's underbelly. 

Stitched scar tissue pulls around his optical mods as if signaling curiosity, but V motions an elbow at his gang instead of getting distracted, "They part of the gig to?

"What?" His upper lip twitches, metal fingers curling into the inhaler, denting hard plastic, "Them? Ha! Fuck no… naw, this'll be quick. Just you an' me. In an' out."

"Hehehe…" giggles the one squatting on the floor, "'Part of the gig??' She says... Hehehe-heee… rich—richy flesh."

_ 'Fine folks you've aligned yourself with,' _ Johnny interjects, materializing mid-stride between them.  _ 'Shit reeks of set up. You sure about this, kid?' _

"Yeah," agrees the one leaning beside Dum Dum, crunching on a cigarette with Shark Teeth modded in three rows, "Real fuckin' ‘ganic this one… fuckin' sleek bitch, be too soft tho."

Dum Dum ignores the Maelstromers but makes a face as if he knows—as if the words came straight outta his mouth and not some borg-dorphers. Instead of that being insulting tho, he fuckin' likes it. Maybe the guys a freak in his circle, same as she is—freak for feeling like he's already docked her despite the several feet between 'em.

"So whatcha think of the place?" Dum Dum asks, sounding unexpectedly genuine.

"Totentanz?" V lowers her shoulders, loosens the grip around her stomach, and steps through a frowning Johnny Silverhand, "Better than Afterlife… music's a bit unrefined for my tastes, but you probably gathered that already."

"... lame output," one of them says, but it's whispered low and muffled, not meant to be heard by her ears, but she's got mods… just nothing as evident as theirs. 

Dum Dum elbows the rude Maelstromer to his right, nodding roughly to the bar with a sneer. The borg snarls back but deltas, leaving her, Dum Dum, and the gonk on the floor.

"Yeah, yeah," Dum Dum hisses, "... music. Said as much the other night. Tinnitus ain't your style, I know, but that's cause yur sober as a corpo on a quarterly meetin'... 'sides you're missin' key mods an' we can help with that." 

"Thanks, but… I'm good: to both."

His voice drops until it's inhuman—a menacing garble of metal and spit, "Sure? Let me chip you in… and you'll fucking cream."

That promise is precisely what she wants—everything her seedy, messy body's been after since Johnny showed up. V wants to have some wet retort or the balls to walk up and trace her fingers up his navel… lick the serrated piercings down his chin and bite something soft, but bite it hard. Instead, she swallows and runs her pink tongue along her lower lip… slow… and telling… but cowardly.

Spider Red Eyes pulse as his chin lowers an inch. His optics don't move like some other mods do, but the way his head dips and lifts say he's taking her in from head to toe, sizing her up. There's clearly something there, but V's unsure how to seduce a borg, let alone a high-standing Maelstromer like him.

"Suit yourself, Princess." There's no underlying insult to that handle this time, but it's still slurred in a way that raises her blood pressure, "Come on, follow me."

And V follows, suddenly eager to take her exposed skin away from the foyer of Totentanz, outta view of the gonk on the floor that hasn't taken his crimson optics off her since she showed up. 

They make it around a cramped looking bar, the eyes of that other borg Dum Dum dismissed following her with his red bulbs until they hit the first set of stairs. 

Dum Dum doesn't look up from his path, seemingly uninterested in the chaos of modded bodies writhing in the pit below them: moans, groans of pain, limbs rising and falling, hips mashing, fumes flooding to the ceiling where beasts and skeletons in red attack everyone on the floor with flat enthusiasm. It's beautiful in its horror show of cold lasers.

She can only imagine how it would look to someone on lace… or anything, even smash. Dum Dum was right; she's painfully sober after the drug binge the other night, especially given the setting.

As they round a corner into a hallway with no doors, the treble flattens, leaving nothing but muted bass undulated between the tight, dirty walls. 

"Little further up here. Hard to talk shop when the band's bashin' yur brain in," it's casual, almost filler until Dum Dum slows down, throwing his head to the side, long enough for one small optic to ping off her face… maybe to make sure she's still there—not dragged off into a shitty lavatory for a bad time.

His lips quirk a second before he's facing the endless hallway again, moving forward with heavy steps, "So, ya like being fodder, yeah. Pay good?"

"Never been called fodder to my face, but yeah, pays well enough." V swallows, feeling her heart pounding warmly beneath her throat, "I take it this means your Royce's Faceman now?"

"Nah—nah, nothin' like that. This a one-time gig, but your hard, and I like your style, even if it looks draga as fuck," Dum Dum says, flashing a chrome grin over his shoulder, shoving an inconspicuous-looking door ajar, "Gotta put yur eddies somewhere."

"Yeah," she smirks without thinking, comfortable and light when it's just him, "and it's clear I'm not spending them on cyberware."

"As fuckin' Nomad skies."

He holds the eight-inch thick door open with a shoulder and nods her into a surveillance-style room where the bass is thicker. 

Before she passes by him, V whispers against his cheek, "Perhaps I'm less organic than you all think." 

"Fooled me," but his tone suggests she didn't—suggests he knows she's got something hidden beneath soft skin and freckles. "Porky, then?"

"Mmm, gettin' warmer," she quips almost playfully, feeling residuals of the ease from the night prior despite her sobriety being painfully apparent to the outside looking in. 

"Always gotta be ready for any job," V continues, watching as Dum Dum lets the vault-like door close with a rumble, "Job ain't gettin' done without the right iron."

"Preem—preem and hard. Ain't no Rimbo, neither. Naw… no cunt, no pussy, no bullshit. Yeah. We're gonna have fun, Princess."

"V is fine."

"Naw." Is all he says, but for some reason, it's not as insulting as it'd be coming from someone else...

"Whatever," V says beneath her breath, suddenly entering a state deja vu, except this time Royce is splayed out, arms on the back of the sofa and chest puffed out, watching her with a disgusted sneer on his lips. A woman next to him—maybe a Mox—jolts in the throes of some BD… whimpering with a smile. Several more borgs in various states of modification stand around, iron hot in their hands; they want a reason to do something, she knows.

V catches Royce's middle optical in a glare but holds firm while Dum Dum kicks several bottles of smash out of the way before nodding at a spray-painted loveseat.

"Park it," he demands.

Johnny shakes his head, standing behind a few Maelstromers, but V parks her ass on the end anyway. Besides the heart-attack-inducing drop beats and scatter-frequencies of Tinnitus and the lone Mox's moaning, there's swollen silence.

"You remember me or what?" V breaks the silence. 

When Royce only growls, baring more teeth, V adds sardonically, "... can't still be pissed about Militech. That shit's ancient history in this city."

"Don't you tell me what I oughta be pissed off about! You've been running around like a stray cat ever since DeShawn got zeroed in the dump," there's nothing friendly about Royce's tone, which is better than the alternative. Hard to trust guys like him when they wear a smile—hard to trust flowers and flesh, better be chrome and blood like this.

Royce rolls his shoulders, laughing crudely, "Gotta say I ain't unimpressed by that flatline. Real fuckin' nasty. But! Now I hear you're workin' with Arasaka?! Went from suckin' fixer dick to corpo dick real fucking fast!"

"Did'ya hear I also stole some costly tech from them too? That what I'm really here for, right." It would figure as much, but this doesn't feel like that… at least not yet it doesn't. Not enough guns to warrant that shit; although showing up as quickly and well-dressed as she is, it wouldn't be hard to look at her and see a solo that's lost her mind.

"Like I'm interested in some stupid fucking relic of a washed-up Rockerboy. Got enough shit goin' on in my own head. Nope. I got eyes set on something much better than that."

"So, this gig'll involve me stealing from Arasaka again."

"What?! No. Didn't Dum Dum tell you all this shit last night?" A mammoth-sized fist of metal and meat motions off the couch, waving at the borg beside her as if—

"Ah…" Dum Dum vocalizes in comfortable pride, "Straight-edged Princess ain't as clean as I thought. Prolly doesn't remember half the stuff she put in 'er mouth." That last bit lacks insinuation, but the words themselves are enough. 

V bites her tongue. 

_ 'Bold. This guy's rubbing off on me.' _

Royce makes a sound of disgusted interest, the kind of noise that comes from a man that wants to murder fuck whatever woman he hates at the moment; sadly, V's confident she's on that list.

"Chillin with Maelstrom ain't for the fleshy types," Royce carries on, trying to look bored, but even those custom Red Eyes can't hide the interest as he snorts, "Tough bitch then. Look like you escaped the plant without much trouble, too, anyway. Fine. Gig is yours."

"A gig you've told me nothin' about," V speaks up, already annoyed by his sloppy protocol. If he's going to play Fixer, he ought to do it right or find one himself…

Royce shrugs, turning his attention on the Mox ripping polymer from her thighs as the BrainDance hits a peak. "Just leave that choom of yours at home. Mother fucker nearly cocked it up for you last time."

An ice bath floods her veins. She's back in bed… the night after—after Misty wheeled her sorry ass into her apartment, both sets of pills held to her chest like a golden goose egg or some preem shit. V's stripped bare and so fucking alone. 

A weak sound passes over her tongue despite herself; Royce doesn't notice due to Tinnitus' next track reaching a crescendo… but the way Dum Dum shifts his boots behind her says he hears it.

"Won't have to worry about that anymore," she says, each word taking a year off her life. She smothers all that depression down with a veneer of anger until Royce finally sends her the gig deets. No sooner is he swallowed back up by his gang and personal Mox.

V stands abruptly, catching several red gazes but doesn't care. Something cold slides around the cusp of her elbow—a prosthetic hand maybe—but she's shoving past Dum Dum to the thick doors and into the muffled chamber of the skinny hallway. 

Another second, and she'd rupture, explode.

She can feel the borg at her back. 

Johnny's in her mind, fueling something with his own ancient rage, but V doesn't have time to question it, neither wonder why. As soon as Dum Dum snatches up the back of her jacket collar, her pain turns to frenzied lust.

She shoves him against a smooth wall, relishing the thick sound his metal-crammed body makes. 

Chrome teeth bite forward. Spider Red Eyes blink red and black like strobe effects across her hot face. V starts to spit some bullshit about how he can kiss this gigs cockhead cause she's… she's…

Metal fingers with hard plastic paddings enclose her throat, cut off oxygen, speech, and sense. The brief second of trapped blood and stolen oxygen feels like an hour, locked in meditation, resulting in bastardized clarity.

When his other hand snags in the front of her bra, V side hands Doom Doom's muzzle under his sharp chin, freezing his fingers around the swell of fat and nerves. 

Despite the threat, he's grinning chrome, and she's snarling pearls.

Stalemate.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're starting to add some filthy fucking tags to this thing.
> 
> Big thanks to Tealicious, TheLadyTheBeast, SantaMuertita, SlapItOnABiscuit, Katargo, ForGodsSake, and TrashPanduh for their amazing comments. Seriously, this shit keeps me LIVING. <3

V feels her fingers sweating around Doom Doom, but there's not a drop coming off Dum Dum; even this close, she expects to see a sheen of perspiration, yet he's dry as a fuckin' Nomad corpse.

"Guess I must've read the vibe wrong," he rasps against his own gun, vocals rattling the DR5 that's started shaking in her fist. She's nowhere close to pulling the trigger, but the way it makes her blood simmer fuels a gentle, coaxing pressure beneath her skirt. There's no helping it anymore...

She matches his vicious grin when his fingers pluck the strap between her tits again.  _ Ballsy _ , that's what Johnny said. Surprising no one's zeroed him for it yet.

"Not this time," V manages as her breathing comes quick and stiff. 

Dum Dum's already dragging her teeth close to his, twisting that other palm beneath studded rayon to cup and squeeze her full breast with enough potential strength to tear it off—the thought of which makes her tremble softly.

"Don' you fuckin' worry, Princess," he says in a feverish whisper of tech-shavings and desperation—so hot against her lips, "Won't tell anyone you're a filthy borg-fucker. Know the drill."

"It's not like—" She tries, only to gasp to a stop as Dum Dum scrapes metal digits underneath her nipple, touching—squeezing—exposed skin. Dexterous mods—not soft but padded—tease the warm steel loop there, pinching and twisting until it feels like he's jacking into her heart.

"Whatever ya wanna tell yurself, V," his breathing feels like it belongs to the beat that throbs against the walls, bouncing down meters of echo chambers until it gets to her lips again. The fist-sized organ in her chest bucks against her sternum, but it's welcome—a euphoric blanket rather than the fear-panic of anxiety.

V wants to kiss him, but he'll laugh or bite until she's bloody… then the icy heat of despair'll come again. She never wants to feel like that again. All she wants is to feel more of this molten delirium—a feeling this borg can give her. 

"Never played with 'ganic pussy before. Figure it's just a bit softer."

There's desperation not related to lust in his posture—in his voice. V's tasted lonesomeness, and the last thing she wants to do is rip open any body's old wounds by feeding her ache. A man like Dum Dum doesn't wake up one day and decide his flesh is weak for no fuckin' reason. Shit takes time—it takes trauma. His fixation is as unhealthy as hers, but she's too weak to walk away.

Dum Dum brings her in hard, pressing whatever modded organ he has between his legs up against her pelvis. It's big. Why wouldn't it be? They don't mod their cocks to make them smaller… But it's…  _ fuck _ ...

"Good dockin's rare with my mods, so I don't mind keepin' things on the down-low... 'specially not for somethin' like you," his fingers yank her nipple ring as he carves each syllable, adding gutturally, "Fuckin' preem—fuckin' soft…"

"Not here," she whispers, gold lips quivering, "... I don't fuck in hallways."

"Yeah,  _ yeah _ …" 

He's already grabbing Doom Doom with a thumb over the barrel, tearing it away from his chin. Once the gun is out of the picture, he rolls something metal and wet in his throat, as if chuckling with one key. His tongue peeks out. And it's just as modified as V thought it'd be, slowly sliding out like a monitor lizard's—studded in black gauges down the middle. It's hard to tell in the low light, but she thinks there's soft wires feeding between the gaps…

"Fleshy solo doesn't dock in hallways… hmm…" Sharp as a knife, he gives her chin a hot flick. "Ya get head in 'em though, yeah?"

Pierced lips of odd temperature skim over the fine lines of her own mods, "Got a little somethin' new. Fuckin'' ganics get curious sometimes, so I spent good eddies on this."

"So—"She sucks in a sharp inhale when the flexible gauges inside his tongue pop along her jawline, "... you're into this?"

Dum Dum growls so low it feels like an ion storm, vibrations settling below her navel and then some even further. 

"Gotta be a metalhead not to," he admits as a hard fact.

V feels sweat beading on her upper lip, over her brow, and beneath her clothes. Dum Dum, for being a Maelstrom, doesn't shy away from it—doesn't seem to feel how she thought he'd respond to the mess of sex because he's already got her back pressed to the wall, dropping to his knees with a heavy, rattling thunk. 

That sweeping, self-assured smirk presses against her belly, Spider Red Eyes casting red stains on smooth skin, and she's… well…

"Been hating how much I've been thinking about this…" V admits the painful truth as Dum Dum jerks her pants down the width of her hips.

"Sounds 'bout right," the tone is nastily casual as if Dum Dum expected nothing less, and V hates that… but she'll lose herself to Johnny soon enough. World doesn't make miracles—world takes and eats, and the only thing people can do to escape the violent mastication is learn by example.

V helps him remove her jeans and spreads her legs before he can wrench them open any harder. She doesn't bother explaining herself to the borg shoving her underwear aside roughly—doesn't give him any reason to think she's not using him because she is. Tomorrow, after this gig, after this orgasm, she'll feel like shit, but not even Royce walking in on Dum Dum eating her out could spoil this moment.

The first contact is electrified, hot, and not gentle. Dum Dum's not sloppy either. 

Nothing about his skills is refined, but it's not a mess of saliva; if anything it's too dry, but the way he flicks and slaps the edges of his tongue along her folds and clit make those things unimportant. It's not even just about his tongue; it's his lips too, piercings cold where she's hot, Spider Red Eye's coating her skin neon red, cut with harsh black shadows. The music pounds. The air massages. His body—his mods—echo with every micro-movement and rough shove to put her in a better position. 

Each smooth, exploratory lick takes an ounce of the weight from her gut. The ice melts and in its place is steam and undulating waves.

Heat suffocates her from the waist down. 

Those sharp, metal fingers with uneven plastic padding grab and mold her hips, yanking her forward. When she stretched away, V's not sure, but he doesn't take it personally, and he doesn't ask… just bruises her skin, shoving her back where he wants her. 

When her sheer skivvies slide back against his sucking mouth, Dum Dum fists the soaked material without preamble and spreads her open wider, exposing bare clitoral nerves and thin inner flesh to his teeth, lips, and over-modded tongue. He fucks her with shallow darts of that dampening muscle while dermal nasal implants brush fire along her clit with each bullish exhale. 

V puffs out moans as softly as she can, watching the top of the borg's head as he eats her from the inside out. Metal dreads sway, red optics flash, metal tubes curling around modded muscle flex and undulate as he holds her where he wants her. Unrelenting strength only increases the effects of his enthusiasm.

Dum Dum groans, emitting something vulgar and violent against her cunt. A sudden wave of tension sucks her pelvis into a spasm, then releases, leaking freely. 

V almost apologizes—almost rips him away from her, but his tongue wiggles deeper, slurping up the fluids that flow. Curled licks and sharp groans of enjoyment; each scrape of his tongue makes a mockery of the last, shredding the tension in her guts until all she is is an exposed nerve, rocking down into his open mouth.

"... don't stop," she begs. 

He replies with a snarling scoff as if saying  _ 'no shit' _ before digging the tip of his tongue beneath her clit, flicking the dense nub so fast tears breach her lashes. Pre-orgasmic tension swells… so close already— _ fuck! _

V's knees start to tremble. She's going to cum. 

The air reeks of sex; as she breathes, she can taste it. She wants it—needs this.

V blushes on principle, but her fingers finally tear themselves off the wall. Under her clammy fingers, Dum Dum's scalp hums. It's synthetic, smooth, and warm, covering some sort of steel skull cap. The texture catches the sweat on her fingers like humid leather, adding a weird sense of eroticism to his talented tongue. 

Maybe he's right, perhaps she's just curious—just a fuckin' ‘ganic that wants a taste of things dorphed and chrome for once. Yet, it feels more than that. V needs to feel alive, and not the kind that comes with evading a bullet. 

She's lost—lost in her daydreams and unwarranted self-pity. 

The emotions spill into her chest just like her pussy does over Dum Dum's tongue, only he's better at swallowing that down than she is her own baggage. Just when she's about to grab at the wall again and let go of everything, a sudden jolt of vibration rips a scream out of her throat. And it's not pretty screaming either...

"Howl all ya want, Princess," Dum Dum barks between her thighs, grappling with her legs and hips as she tries to tear herself off whatever's buzzing against her. 

"What—what the fuckin— _ ahn! _ " 

Fear ripples through her for a scant second cause it's way too easy for him to pull her back, shouldering between her knees and forcing a restless leg over body-warm cables and steel box mods, fitting her knee in the dip between shoulder and neck. 

Dum Dum barely struggles with her before V can't fuckin' move, can't speak or mutter a single fuckin' obscenity…

His tongue's back over her slit, pulsing so fast—vibrating from root to the tip—right up inside her dripping center. That sharp smirk is open wide, engulfing her lips and clit where everything quickly becomes victim to hellish euphoria, doused in fluorescent crimson. 

For a second, nothing matters. For a moment in time, V truly relishes the muted crunching beats from Tinnitus on the first floor and the odor of sweaty cyberware.

"... yess."

When V finally cums, she's worse than flatlined. The feeling fucks with her psyche, laying out her weaknesses where Dum Dum clips 'em with invisible trackers one firm flick at a time. 

He owns her now…

_ 'You're so fucked, kid.' _

Instead of screaming, her throat closes, emitting wheezing whimpers and whistles masked by quiet sobs, unable to even manipulate a single word—her body freezes, locked by gorilla fists and her own clenching muscles. 

_ Please, don't let anyone walk in, _ she begs. It's not because she cares that Dum Dum's smacking his lips along her pussy, or that she's ashamed to have her cunt on display… it's whatever vulnerable look's now plastered on her face. 

_ 'Agreed. No one needs to see that shit.' _

"Tastin' pretty hard, V… yeah, like the hair too," he growls, satiated, running a thumb through the trimmed patch above her mound like it's corpo carpet on blue glass.

She's still cumming even when Dum Dum starts laughin' against her cunt; the sound is charged with hot wires and other things. Some of that vibration is still there, trapped in her nerves… maybe forever.

"It—it won't…. stop!  _ Ahn— _ "

"Kinetic pulses," he offers, hot and raspy, "same junk they use to mix hydrogen in mother fuckin' space! Diodes have a curly-cue of thermionic tubes down to the root. Keeps it from shreddin' flesh, figured 'ganic girl like you'd dig it."

Still, on his knees, chin covered in shine, Dum Dum pulls a hit of dorph out his flak pocket, takes a hit, and releases in a long, satisfying rumble; the kind she's only heard from men the second they start cumming.

Her heart is pounding, chest heaving for oxygen. The high is everywhere. None of it's getting stronger, but it's spreading, filling her fingers and toes only to ricochet back up her limbs into her throbbing cunt. And there—watching with all seven Red Eyes—is the borg that made it happen.

V's speechless. 

Dum Dum obviously notes the effect his mods have had because the grin is sly enough to pull his black dermal piercings into stark grooves. Even the metal seams that join his cheek dimple with male pride.

_ 'You sure this was a wise decision?'  _ Johnny walks in already mid-pace, giving the borg now hopping to his knees a dirty look,  _ 'I say we zero this junkie now. Jig-Jig street alone's got ten-eddie dildos that'll beat the demons outta you. Falling for this borg-hole is bad news. Trust me.' _

"... where were you five minutes ago?" She whispers, nearly soundless.

Dum Dum levels his shoulders and looks down at her with a loose mouth, "Huh? Eatin' yur preem pussy, whatcha gettin' at?"

"No—not…" there's literally no point in telling Dum Dum or anyone else how bad the relic shit is—what having an engram actually means, so she fumbles to readjust her skivvies and pull up the rumpled pile of her jeans, "I umm, I think I need to lie down for a bit. That was—"

"Here," he's close again, pressing the mouth of his inhaler to her lips until she opening up wide. Dum Dum releases a static-laced moan that's prolly not for anyone, especially her to hear, and pumps her lungs full of dorph until the endorphins from her orgasm are dusted into a pure refinery. 

"Sure," he bites loud but soft, voice a living echo as the rush strengthens all her senses without overpowering them, "Yeah. Overload. Know how that goes."

He doesn't give her time to linger in the high, already pulling her down the hallway, "Follow me, Princess."

It takes several wobbling steps to bring life back into her legs. The journey is slow, but Dum Dum doesn't seem to be in a rush, nor does he seem put-off that he wasn't offered the same treatment as he'd given. 

Maybe she ought to set time aside in the Quadra before their gig and suck him off—see what he's packin' now that it might be as easy as asking nicely.

A general vibrancy in the air says he doesn't expect the offer, prolly doesn't care anymore—definitely why he took a hit of dorph after making her cum like that. It's hard to remember now that her brain's been rewired by Dum Dum's preem tongue, but V wonders how many times he's been propositioned—how many times he's been denied or just straight up used and left to deal alone. 

Enough hits of dorph and demanding users'll say it's better than the old fashion method.

Out on the main floor of heavy bass and penetrating tonal shifts stab at her body high, but the organic dopamine is more challenging to cut than dorph. Even the sudden blare of chaos in sound, smell, and visual spectrum when Dum Dum throws a heavy arm over her shoulder, barely kicks a dent in her haze.

"Getcha a drink?"

"Could use deets on this gig we're doin'... pretty sure I lost most of it the night before. Keep this up, and I'll forget we even got business…"

"Smash n' dorph first, then we talk shop. Fuckin' parched."

_ Wouldn't know it from the way he drank off her cunt five minutes ago _ , V thinks, almost convinced it never happened except it did. Leftovers linger in her muscles, tickling where his tongue mashed and stroked…

At the bar, there's a hole filled with dorph and Ab-synth where any awkwardness might be. 

Dum Dum even gives her a whack on the back and a hard grind of laughter when she sneers at a familiar Maelstromer; the one she'd knocked out the night before.

Eventually, Black Lace—warehouse made—comes out, and she's  _ just _ inebriated enough to decided that's a good idea. It's what she wanted, right? Sex and drugs and a different flavor of violence.

The sofa she spotted when first walking into Totentanz ends up a feelin' like a hawk-feathered mattress beneath her back sometime later. Dum Dum's got metal fingers coated in rubberized lubricant stuffed up inside her, breaking open welts along her neck with chrome-teeth and long licks of a dry, shivering tongue. Lace normalizes it—makes all her worries melt into a sinking background of flippant concerns and meritless fears. Above that cesspool of nonsense, she's floating, rocking her body into his fingers, following the siren sound of movement from whoever's playing on the stage.

There's nothing special about his hands—except they're large and as inorganic as they come—but every third breath that passes between them makes it feel like another orgasm is dragged out of her. Pleasure comes in overlapping wave by wave until V is simply nothing else but transcendental euphoria. 

Dum Dum growls filth in her ear. "All of 'em watchin' like corpses; tongue wagging over eddies. Should see their fuckin' faces!"

And more, "Lace won't let you feel the pain, yeah. But I'm bein' real gentle."

V smells blood, but it's not hers, just musk and salt and the warm effervescence of his mods heating up as he finger fucks her across the filthy fuckin' sofa. 

"Gonna cum again," he says. It's not a question. Surely, he can feel them all, probably predict them after the dozen, or so she's experienced in the past few minutes. 

V's head rolls to the side as her body sways back and forth against him, her own fingers crushed in the straps of his flak jacket like a bayou at sea. Just as soon as her thigh finds the hard bulge lifted away from her, black lace is shoved back between her teeth.

"Come on then… fuckin' cum for me— _ now _ ."

The plunger goes down. Inhale. Hold; release.

… and the world melts…

… nothing matters…

When everything's rematerialized, V's staring at the vent lines above her bed. Nicotine falls like humid clouds from Johnny, who's sitting on the edge, smoking a cigarette silently. If he's back, then she can't be high anymore, but—

"Remember what happened?" V asks; her throat is a razor husk of chemical burns.

_ 'I checked out the second time you let that ugly fucker get in your pants. Well, more or less. Always was curious what it felt like to get finger blasted.' _

V runs black nails through purple tangles, hooking into the area where her headache pounds the hardest, "As if you've never let your groupies tongue punch your asshole…"

_ 'Hmmm, fair point. Gonna get the fuck up already? I'm bored watching a street rat sleep off a dorphhole.' _

With a remarkable feat of strength and one long, painful groan, V rolls over on her side, panting as her head threatens to split open, "Did… did anything else happen after?"

_ 'Someone brought you home, didn't they? Harry a guess as to who that was.' _

"Didn't think he knew where I lived…"

Johnny blows a pixelated cloud of nicotine in her face with a mean-spirited smile,  _ 'Who says he had to find it? Probably showed him yourself, Ms. I-don't-fuck-in-hallways. Fuck. Talk about square.' _

" _ Ugh _ ," she pulls herself up on an elbow, catching whatever's in her stomach from spilling out onto the floor through sheer will and clenched teeth, "... showin' your age, Johnny. Lighten up, will ya."

Johnny snorts a cloud of smoke and screentears himself out of sight, out of mind. For a moment, she misses him—odd—but then the clarity of an afternoon hangover makes her realize what that means. 

Several long minutes pass. Time speeds forward as she drifts in and out of consciousness, sleeping away waves of nausea until it's later in the day and her phone is blowing up. 

Blearily—still too sore to function appropriately—V grabs her phone to find Dum Dum's face filling up the screen. 

_ "Yo! Fuckin'' ganics can't handle their lace. Awake now?" _

"... barely," she blinks into her screen, swiping up with a tap to project his mug on her holo screen in the lounge. 

_ "Nice view, _ " he comments, voice even more degraded by electric feedback than usual, making a scratchy sound of interest as she folds herself out of bed. The fact that she's topless doesn't seem to bother either of them. After last night, nothing short of getting gagged by his borg cock would make her blush—maybe.

"What time is it?" She asks, rubbing dregs of sleep and stale pain from her eyes, "Was it you that brought me here?"

_ "Yeah. Preem place you got. Blue room's full 'ah nice iron an' bang bombs. Disc collection could use some work, but we got time. So, ya ready?" _

"Hold on. I… need a damn shower. Feel like I—"

_ "Got docked into minced meat? Yeah, these'll do that to ya…" _ Dum Dum wiggles his cybernetic fingers in the corner of the screen with a loose-lipped grin. His red optics look brighter—hotter—like the bulbs are close to breaking, but then the light diffuses with a low, gritty chuckle,  _ "Do what you gotta do. Be headin' there in an hour." _

And then he's gone, and V's left there looking like a legit street rat, waterlogged in the gills and starving. First, though, she needs a shower, a hypo, and ten minutes to rethink her life choices.

_ 'Gonna need more than ten fucking minutes.' _

" _ Ugh _ … talk about an understatement."

Tonight is gonna be a fuckin' roller ride into the exact thing she wanted. Lucky her…


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing like a car ride to lighten the mood.
> 
> Big thanks to Tealicious, gatesgates, LadySkeptic, Katargo, transmaniandevil, YellowGodValtiel, biteyouo, PiSeule, ForGodsSake, TrashPanduh, SlapItOnABiscuit, TheLadyTheBeast, and silvertonguedelf for their fuckin' outstanding comments. It means so much to see you guys enjoying this, because I'm having such a lovely time writing. Also... big thanks to SlapItOnABiscuit's comment on Chapter 6. They introduced me to the new Dum Dum Joytoy mod I have yet to check out. ;)

If it wasn't for Dum Dum's penchant for carrying mass amounts of street drugs in a variety that would color the cheeks of any minimum wage corpo, she'd have pulled iron on him several miles back. Fucker had a cure for almost anything, especially the cure for existence if his near-constant dorph huffing was any indication.

Whatever dissolvable pill he’d jabbed against her cheek earlier worked hard on the nauseous pain curling around her temples. Unfortunately, the chalky tablet didn't fix the empty-headed feeling by the time it was ready to slide behind the wheel of her Quadra. 

V tries to tell herself there's worse things right now than Dum Dum driving her baby.

"You're driving is shit," she tells him but doesn't let slip how much better it is than Jackie's ever was. Perhaps the buoyant choom's been on her mind more after last night. Somethin' about transcendental experiences with lace and sexual release—minute after minute—cleared a blockage. This morning, she’s reached a level of acceptance. Could be why she was so quick to toss Dum Dum the key fob… old habits die hard.

Lowly, she adds, "Course, driving could always be shittier."

The decked-out borg to her left shouldn't be able to hear her over the neo metal pumping from the woofers, but mid-drift into the industrial complex side of town, Dum Dum flashes her a nasty grin of shiny teeth that catches the falling sun. He's grisly, chromed out, and hideously appealing. Which, oddly enough, is the first time she's admitted to herself how attractive she finds him. Still, watchin’ him driving the Quadra like a certain somebody used to brings up recent memories—memories that ache… but less so than before.

Used to be she never thought anyone could get as close to her as Jackie did. He was a brother, a friend, a partner. They were good together. Not for the first time does V realize having Jackie in place of Johnny wouldn't've lead to this unplanned moment with a Maelstrom of all people, but... does she wish things were different? No, she realizes. Somethin' about the borg is getting to her, crawling under her skin, and it ain't a lousy itch like mites or chemical rash. Just—just sitting here with him, chillin' before a gig feels sorta normal.

Earlier in her apartment, Dum Dum went over some of the jobs deets. Sneaky fuck had shown up without a sound. No mechanized lock click. No heavy dragging steps. No nothing…

She'd still been dripping dry from the shower, bent over her mirror with Doom Doom on her rumpled bedsheets when she caught his stark red optics out the corner of her eyes. She'd been as accessible as any dangerous individual could have hoped for, welcome or otherwise. If there'd been a better moment for him to tear her towel off and sledge-fuck her in private, V can't think of one. 

Idly, V glances over at his lap where, no doubt, a threatening borg cock awaits some brave pussy. 

It's obvious he’s got working equipment unless it's malfunctioning in some other way, cause she's felt his borg-cock hard in the moment twice now… even spied a shadow of arousal when he was gesticulating in her apartment earlier, remarking on the messy state of the place from whatever he considered pristine the night before.  _ Fuckin' neat freak... _

"Royce sure about his intel?" V pipes up again, "Doesn't think maybe having some complicated stunt show could backfire on 'im?"

"Nah," Dum Dum growls excitedly, "Info's legit, same fucker we hit up with the Flathead. Corpses get a whiff of competition, an' they're worse than if they spotted Mr. Rot Lips with the big cock dockin' their girl. Trust me, cunts like that forget sense when opportunity comes to do ah' lil' backstabbin.'"

"Corporate slimes are all the same. So," V turns the music down by two notches, "neither of them suspect anything?"

"Fuck no! Both think they're fuckin' over the other."

She can't help the mild smile that curls her lips, watching him bounce in the driver's seat. Prolly higher than he oughta be, but V doesn't believe for a second that dorph impairs his ability to do just about anything. Gangs are always evolving in Night City, especially their members. Dum Dum is proving to be his own breed of ultra-violence, mixed with odd loyalty, and a bastardized code of ethics. Soon as corpos think they got 'em figured out, gangs pull something like this...

"Gotta admit," V states, nearly lower than the screech-throb of the radio, "impressive. Tech sounds good: both of 'em."

"Yeah, ours though—now that's some chrome—real-time cell reconstruction with atom synchronicity. Self-duplication don't just mean self-healing. Once installed, shit means everyone in Maelstrom got a chance to chip in."

V still isn't thrilled about what precisely one of the most sadistic gangs in Night City could accomplish with tech as hot as this, but Dum Dum's right… it's hot shit, and the way he called it 'ours' gives her stomach those flutters she seldom receives anymore. Besides, only a matter of time before this tech hits the market; the only protection then will be the paywall Militech establishes. 

Either way, the streets are fucked. Least she'll get a fat eddie haul out of it this way… and maybe a chance to chip in herself. Who wouldn't wanna have advanced healing? Better and faster, and on average forty-five times the average speed.

"So," V turns to him, stuffing herself against the passenger door, arms crossed with a casual front, "this something you qualify for? Technically speaking. Got open cyberware slots for shit like that, or enough skin for it to work."

"Heh, tech don't discriminate. Can have as much chrome as ah' want, long as I got some flesh left, it'll work."

Like that'll last long.  _ Since when did borgs stop at seventy-five percent chrome, anyway? _ He can't even be that old—older than her, sure, but not by much. All those short years under his belt, and he's already this borged out…

V doesn't pry further; instead, she turns her gaze to the intersection where several petroleum trucks are lined up arm in arm every which way. She can feel Spider Red Eyes on her, scoping down her figure, maybe taking in the various sunspots on authentic human skin like she's a corpo's prized painting. Or he's vaguely disgusted, which explains why he hasn't docked her yet…

"What's the plan if shipment's running late? Got a storm rolling in soon," she nudges a shoulder at the skyline peeking between some ancient scaffolding, prolly leftover from when the eddies stopped rolling in.

"Lil' water ain't hurt nothin'. Easy. We wait, unless yur worried 'bout the hair gettin' wet." Those last two words come with a mechanical rumble—a growl like a rumbling tailpipe. Dum Dum looks absolutely manic from the side profile he offers, down to the way his gloved hands—steel and leather—twist the steering wheel. The soft, red hue filtering between storm clouds only morphs his cyberware into something hellish and creamy.

V swallows and pushes her ass back into the bucket seat, still slightly stunned by all the tiny revelations she's learned in the past twenty minutes. 

One: how clean his appearance is. The smell from Totentanz isn't there, instead, every crevice and corner exudes a warm, iodine aroma. She wonders silently if hygiene is a regular thing for him or if he's putting on airs because of last night. For sure, his comments about the apartment weren't a ploy. Yeah 

Two: his music collection isn't all typical Maelstrom type shit. He flicked on a custom station earlier—one with too many classics in rotation—before V changed it on him. Stuff like SAMURAI and Lizzy Wizzy of which Johnny has already made scathing comments about.

And three: she's not prepared for this mission. It hurts to admit, but by this time tomorrow, she'll be infiltrating the Arasaka Parade, and shit like that required a clear head, the likes of which she ain't got yet, nor will she after all this. 

Sure, Dum Dum's admitted he's got a PLS that's been modified with heat sink tech, but V's never met up with a Militech drop off that wasn't also a setup.

"What's your problem?" Dum Dum asks roughly while cruising through a traffic stop. They're nearly out of Night City limits, where street laws matter even less. 

"... dunno. Could have something to do with this plan you an' Royce have cooked up. Pretty sure my head’s still soft from last night and you're counting on Militech not doing some tricky corpo shit too."

"Got eyes Royce don't, means I ain’t worried. Told 'im to trust ya. Got plans to eat that 'ganic cunt of yours again. Be a shame if they turned iron and blew our brains out."

"Yeah?” V barely heard anything after ‘eating her out again,’ “You haven't asked for a return of the favor yet. How come?"

Dum Dum's grin nearly matches the metal skull's welded across her steering wheel, "Prefer munchin' than gettin' munched."

"Seriously?" She asks, too unsure to feel elated, "What sort of cyberware do Maelstrom girls have that's made you turn down head?"

His shitty scoff piques her curiosity even more, "You don't wanna buncha chrome in your mouth. Not with all that 'ganic flesh ya got. ‘Cept me, I’m gentle.”

V laughs until his seven reds spear her with a blazing glare, sharp mouth a thin, bloodless line with the hint of a smirk at one edge. As soon as he cuts his gaze back over the road, she's relaxing in the seat, teeth in her tongue, but that doesn't stop her from continuing, "I've seen enough cock—chipped and flesh. Sure, Maelstroms known for their hyper-chrome mods, but—"

"Execute this fuckin' gig without droolin', and I'll show ya my special friend. Deal?"

"... sure," she mutters, catching a stutter before she can embarrass herself. 

A raspy laugh is all she gets before he turns down a road and the heavens open up. The Quadra's pressurized wipers kick in, blowing droplets off the windshield before they can start sleuthing down the glass. Almost immediately, orange-drop afternoon light fades to cool darkness, casting a density over the tension lingering between them; like a damn steel blanket, the weight of it is almost too much.

Miles of dead road pass by the time the music, his low-frequency breathing, and her own idle thoughts itch beneath her skin. 

V looks over to find him mid-glance between her and the road. Usually, guys caught starin' like that would pretend they weren't, but Dum Dum throws her another penetrative run down that lasts longer than necessary before turning all seven spider reds to the wet roads. 

Borg's had his mouth between her legs, and his tongue shoved in her pussy, so… why does it take a deep breath on her part to ask him why he hasn't tried to fuck her yet? Honestly, now she feels like some thirsty Rimbo, and it's not only because Johnny's chuckling at her from the backseat. 

"Do you not fuck or something?"

Dum Dum smirks as if he’s been expecting the crass question, "Who needs to dock it when there's black lace for cheap. 'Sides… felt you cum enough for a fuckin' JoyToy to flatline. Wanna do that again. You look like you’re dyin’ when you nut."

" _ Ugh _ . Something bugs me about you borgs—always need the best tech, even when it comes to toys, but rarely seem to ever use 'em."

"Fuckin' lots of borgs then, yeah."

V blushes, but he doesn't take his focus off the slick road to catch it; instead, his smirk widens, "Didn't think so."

_ 'We really gotta work on your seduction skills, kid.'  _ Comes Johnny's helpful comment from the backseat. 

She dares crane her neck back to glare but finds him an even more infuriating sight than she'd thought. For an engram, he's made himself quite comfortable, arms stretched out on the cushions, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a lazily, self-assured smile pinching his lips.

_ 'Wanna get in this cyberpsycho's pants so bad, why don't you just do some sixty-nine action. Give him a whiff, and he'll be back at you like a dog on a bone. Won't care if you're sucking his cock or not. Trust me.' _

V bites her lip, crosses her arms, and turns her attention back to the wet scenery beyond her rig. It's not far now. Only real worry is if she can get this shit wrapped up in time to meet up with Takamura tomorrow without resorting to more street drugs…

Eventually, despite the growing silence—marred with thoughts of the treatment she got last night—Dum Dum rolls up the hill of a decommissioned radio tower. There, the rain falls sideways, beating against the window on her right. 

"How much time until the drop off?”

Quietly, rasping against his tech, Dum Dum speaks, "Aint expecting the calvary for twenty-nine minutes. Corpos usually run on time..."

V notes the lower octave—a decibel deeper than any she’s heard there before. She shifts in the leather, feeling it squeak beneath her ass and thrum against the back of her thighs. A moment of quietness spreads on long enough that she glances through the darkness where his Spider Red Eyes are poised on the black rain outside the windshield. 

Suddenly, his unspoken words unlock a synapse bridge in her brain, and her heart starts thudding. 

With a slight quiver, V clears her throat, "Press the black button on your left—one with the two horizontal white lines. Don't want Militech seeing those Red Eyes."

A dull, metal thumb triggers her windshield shutters, projecting a gritty image of the outside scenery on her holodash as her dome lights brighten to a low orange-hue. The whole interior is bathed in gold and filtered red, pinging off her car's inner angles and all the borg’s cyberware.

Dum Dum cranes his neck to the side, just in time to catch her sliding off her shiny bomber jacket, exposing a thin white skull tank. Her nipples are hard—have been since he mentioned eating her out again. His head dips, staring at her chest, although he doesn't have long to stare because V drags the threadbare material over her head and crawls across the short foot of space between them.

His bloodless frown only dips further, yanking against the black lip ring and dermal piercings down his cheeks and chin; a look of utter focus and self-disgust if she's ever seen one. Even without those 'windows into the soul,' V thinks maybe she’s got him figured out for the most part. It's why instead of undoing his tight pants, she presses her thumbs to his pulse point on either side, right below his clipped ears, and covers his sneer in a kiss.

This—she moans—is the kinda skin to skin contact she’s been craving. Nothing synthetic or cold. As much as his mouth thins, he's still warm, exhaling hot moisture through his mutilated nostrils.

V doesn't pull away when he doesn’t respond, simply lingers, breathing hot, panting breaths as she massages polymer-reinforced arteries surging blood to his brain—however 'ganic it still is. Even a flick of her tongue does nothing except explode her taste buds in something salty and rich.

Only when she slides a thigh over his lap to straddle him does Dum Dum react. 

V doesn’t know what to prepare for, but it should have been this sudden surge of animation. It's a snarl, a nip of teeth, a hard squeeze of tit in rough chrome fingers, and violence. Her lip splits. Sharp, thin pain makes her gasp. Quickly, it’s swallowed by a nasty kiss that's as dry as she expected but deeper than she'd thought.

Dorph hits were good an' all but this… is addictive. How he can prefer chemical puffs over this, V doesn’t understand. This—this is what it feels like to be alive.

Emboldened, but clumsy, her lips close and spread across a growling mouth of black steel and one vibrating tongue. It’s nothing like the jolt he pushed against her clit, but it’s there… and it’s turning an uneven kiss into something much more. 

Dum Dum grabs her face in one large, metal hand and jerks her closer, smashing her teeth against his. V winces and tastes blood—her own—with copper doused in saliva. His chrome teeth gnaw along the slender wound on her lower lip and when another moan opens V’s lips up wider, the borg curls his tongue between her molars and inner cheek. Every sound he tears outta her throat with bites and twists of her nipple is swallowed down with plentiful lip sucks and unapologetic kisses. 

V whimpers, grabs the back of the headrest, and rocks down in his lap until he's snarling and bucking his hidden, borg cock between her legs, ramming the mountain of steel where her insides leak.

A jolt of hot fear spears up her middle, cut with fuzzy warmth. 

Dum Dum's big—too big. Having the outline of it shoved up against her like this… mock fucking into her, she's actually afraid. 

From the backseat, Johnny whistles as she groans, unable to stop her body from rowing down over the mass.

Dum Dum gives her lower lip another rough suck and flattens his tongue against her chin, licking back into her mouth with a mechanical growl. He feasts until her lips tingle with overstimulation… then… he throws her back against the steering wheel and rakes worn-plastic finger pads down her breasts. 

"Check it out," Dum Dum hisses lowly, throwing his chin up. Spider Red Eyes pulse bright enough to cover her naked upper body in stains of red that highlighT’s inflamed lines of scratched skin.

"S'like you like me or somthin'. I can see yur heart skippin' beats…"

V trembles.

"An' this," his vocals dip to a dull scrape as his fingers mold and tweak her nipples—tugging almost gently at her threaded rings, "real fuckin' soft." But it doesn’t sound like a compliment but more a resentful insult.

"Too soft for you tho, right?" She bites in a whisper.

Silence. 

His lack of answer lasts so long, V almost shakes his hands off—refusing to fall victim to the way he continues touching her breasts, almost like he's actually worried he's gonna poke holes and spill more than a foreplays amount of blood. It's upsetting. V wants him to gorilla fuck her, even—and maybe especially—if it damages her… or so she thinks she does. This delicate shit all of a sudden isn’t what she told herself she was after. Way back when he was just a dumb fantasy while she was plotting suicide, V wanted him to kill her… perhaps...

"I'm dying," she confesses in the silence of his slow exploration down her heaving chest, "and I want someone like you to use me until… there's nothing left but Johnny."

_ '... sorry, kid.' _

A sideways frown twists Dum Dum's face. Course he doesn’t know who the fuck Johnny is… but still… he doesn’t toss her over the middle seat and rip her insides to shreds.

It's the exact opposite of what V wants when his gloved hands smooth around her ribs, pulling her closer by micron increments as if drawing her in for a hug. Surely, she doesn't make much sense, but the distant sound of rolling engine exhaust isn't creative thunder, so V uses the excuse to peel his cyberware off her body and slip back into the passenger seat. It doesn't escape her notice how utterly unexpected his reaction to everything has been including her denial.

"Showtime," she grumbles, dragging her tank and jacket back on, schooling her composure with a skintight zip up her front. 

"... fuckin' right it is," he finally says, nothing but flint and chrome-throated disappointment in his voice.

Dum Dum draws a modded Lexington and throws open the car door. Cold rain blows even colder air against her left. V follows suit with a blank expression, gripping Doom Doom against a chest that still burns with the ghost of intimacy. She shakes her head, dispels the uncanny affection, and pushes herself out into the sobering rain to steal some fancy tech from Militech corpses.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takemura botches a job and V needs some dorph an' a lil' TLC...
> 
> Huge, massive thanks to ForGodsSake, wastelandbabyx, untitled07, Katargo, gatesgates, Zireael07, TheLadyTheBeast, Tankgirl777, emdashesnsemicolons, Justanothersnakecult, SlapItOnABiscuit, Guest2247, TrashPanduh, and bonnie_wee_lassie for their comments. I promise, I will get to replying to all of them soon. Just wanted to get this chapter out since I accidentally wrote 6k so... had to trim it into two chapters. Oops... you get one now and one like... soon. Enjoy!

There's nothing like death to rattle one's mortal coil—nothing like giving it rather than takin' it to make a person consider what existence's point at all; just a strange blip in something more splendid, or a sadistic glimpse of awareness before there's an epoch of nothing. 

_ ‘Give the melodramatics a rest. Jesus. So a borg-hole dumped your ass. So fucking what.’ _

V curses the engram to her left and wipes off cold sweat from beneath damp purple threads. The aroma of fried noodles and freeze-dried mochi hits her as she walks out onto the 21st-floor balcony. There's less Night City pollution up here, but the crowd of NC denizens is webbed and massive enough that a feeling of guilt creeps under her skin. Their brief escape from reality is proven by their chatter, smiles, and laughter. Of course, none of them can see the blood under her black fingernails—no, they're all too busy watching and waiting for the dragon to float on by… lost in the ignorance of bread n’ circus.

_ 'I know this is a tense little ballet you're puttin' on here, but could you maybe take a break from the retrospective bullshit? Your mood's infectious…' _

Johnny materializing through a couple holding hands, pixels cutting in brilliant rainbows and flares. V stares at the clasped hands barely visible behind the hallucination and frowns. Death and the fear around it bubbles up regardless of how Johnny feels, and—worst of all—it comes candy-coated in envy. 

_ 'What?' _ Johnny glances at the two women, fingers of both segmented metal and ligament-bound bone interlaced. Flesh and chrome. Together. 

_ 'I thought we went over this? Junkie borg ain't worth it, kid. Never was.' _

"It's not that," she whispers, carefully stepping past residents dressed in LED-woven dregs and loud colors. 

_ 'I get it. Show me the man who flatlined me, and I'd spend about two-seconds thinkin' before I tore his brain apart. Let that fucker hand me life advice and I’d eat a shotgun shell.’' _

V's only half-listening to both Johnny, because Takemura’s in her ear—softly speaking the mission's next chapter in zen-like detail.

_ “There should be a maintenance ladder to your right. The second sniper will not suspect someone from the bottom, be sure to move quietly.” _

“Ya know, for someone so trusting in my talents, you certainly seem to question them half the time,” V states.

_ “I meant no offense. Your skills are impressive.” _

She nods in agreement while moving through a drunk tunnel crowd that does their best to make it hard to avoid their collective mating call.

_ “V, I would not trust anyone else to do what must be done.” _

“You don’t  _ have _ anyone else to trust,” she quips, but V gets it. Compliments are rare in Night City, so she says nothing else as the yellow ladder comes into view.

_ “You make a fair assessment…” _

Before she can reach for the ladder, something hot rushes up her spine. She inhales, freezes mid-reach to the second sniper's location, as Johnny curls inside her bones, filling her nerves with a taste of crushed marrow and real… genuine fear of death. It’s an accident. She knows it like she knows her own emotions, but the screeching halt it lays over her identity is vulgar.

"F—fuck, Johnny… not—not now..." she gapes, trying not to panic as the brief meld between their consciousness and memories fades, leaving V a dead leaf, trembling precariously off a branch. 

"What… what triggered that?"

_ 'Dunno. Guess it’s got something to do with how fucking morose you’ve been tonight. Shit ain't normal.' _

"None of this is fucking normal! Just… just try to keep your fingers out of mine right now. Please.”

_ 'Whatever. Can’t say jumping in your brain’s all that attractive anyway.' _

While her core feels raw after Johnny's short-lived takeover, V flexes her fingers and toes and hauls her ass up the ladder with a grimace. There's work to do before Johnny takes control entirely, or… perhaps he's onto something—along with Takemura—in that this end all be all of gigs could save her from the void.

If she wasn’t dying, maybe she’d have met Dum Dum half-way last night instead of the lies she tried to spin to cover for whatever weirdness occurred in the Quadra. Thing is, was she not crumbling under the relic, she might not have even paid the Maelstromer any mind. 

As she ascends the ad tower, V promises to answer the gonks texts if she survives tonight.

_ ‘Ugh, fuckin’ sap.’ _

The second sniper shows how useless most cyberware tools can be when installed on an ape with no sense to begin with. Cleanest Arasaka-sponsored cyberware couldn’t fix a man with zero spatial awareness. This one tho?—she doesn't snap his neck. A thin hiss leaks between her teeth as she locks her muscles, biceps flexed and squeezing, severing all oxygen from his brain until thick, limp weight collapses against her. V rests there for a moment, panting for the same air she stole from the nameless security op… 

At this angle, the miasmic clouds Night City look almost serene. She lowers her lashes and wonders up in the sky at the stars obscured by rising pollution, if she ought to kick this city and buy a trailer out in Nomad country. Die while seeing real stars for a change.

_ ‘Gettin’ introspective again.’ _

Johnny’s right. That Maelstromer’s left her feeling empty. Drugs and sex only fix so much, plus… this ache isn't only pulsing between her thighs… 

Fucking borg makes her forget she's dying—makes her feel like things'll be okay, maybe. And that ain't good. Complacency will one-hundred percent leave Johnny locked in her body, but fear… uncertainty, might just bear fruit.

V swallows something rotten like longing that runs far too deep and rolls the comatose sniper off into the railing. Glittering scales from floating goldfish flare-up in her pupils. For a half-second, she's drunk on the majesty of it. 

It's… pretty…

Dragons with xylophone tails glide through the air. Float jets hum the air between towering domiciles, cluttered with the red glow of Japanese lanterns and sparklers string up like uncoordinated spider webs gleaming with humidity. Maybe in this life, she misses out on this shit, but—but perhaps just a minute more, V thinks, sitting beside a warm body while Johnny grumbles that she's taking too long.

The rest of her evening is a ride of gore, electric misfires, and fuckery. Oda doesn't go down easy, not without slicing a pinky finger off her left hand and nearly gouging out an eye. The pain is acceptable—it's welcome because it's the final catalyst that brings her off the shore and into the river where she can flow once more. 

If she kills Oda while the technicolor dragons fly by the glass windows, she doesn't really remember. All V thinks about is surviving, then minutes later she’s standing over a monitor, wondering what the fuck this whole thing was worth?!

Takemura's mission is fucked. The Ex-Arasaka bodyguard fucked it up worse than she did in taking Jackie's relic. For someone to not have a foolproof plan once in front of a woman like Hanako Arasaka was just… 

_ 'V! Let's get the fuck outta here!' _

"Fuck!" V snarls, laying waste to all her hopes in that one word. 

She shoves away from the holoscreen and books it. 

Anxiety morphs the adrenaline, forcing burnt images of Takemura tasering Hanako fuckin' Arasaka, despite the soles of her feet aching with every floor she races down. V takes every third step until her knees are pounding and her feet are numb—she bursts through happy-clouded crowds and firework rain until she's in the same sad, desolate parking lot where she met Takemura four hours earlier. 

Her heart rate gallops in her throat, ears, and eyeballs... going haywire, setting off alert notifications in her Kiroshi optics. She's gonna have a heart attack before Johnny can take over—she's gonna die, organ meat torn apart by her own terror.

_ 180bpm _

_ 189bpm _ ...

_ 198… bpm.. _ .

In her jacket pocket, her phone rings, but V can't reach it. Even—even if she could, her fingers wouldn't work.  _ My pinky, _ she thinks, still in mild shock.

_ 'We'll get you a new one, kid. Just drive!' _

Everything is beyond reach except—

_ 'Floor it. Come'on. Anywhere but here,' _ Johnny says it through her teeth. When she won’t move, he does. His bones in her bones, wrapping around the steering wheel, hitting the ignition. 

She's gotta get the fuck out of here, skip Night City, burn the road behind so no one can find her. 

_ ‘Shut up!’ _

Johnny clenches the wheel again, but it's her own grip she feels beneath her smooth palm and ballistic coprocessor. Panic-induced hallucinations manifest as industrial glue—hot and viscous—holding her down in the bucket seat. V drives because she can't fight him, and when she's pulling into the garage at Megabuilding H10 her heart is a flutter—a hum—a vibration of  _ 212bpm _ and…

_ 'Calm down, kid. Not dyin' yet… just breathe.' _

V kicks open the driver-side door, wrenching out of Johnny's ghost-like a second skin being torn off baby-softness. She gags, hunches over her knees, and vomits across oil-stained concrete.

For a second, it feels like her heart stops, then another stomach churn of puke splatters across the ground, and it hammers to life again. The out of body experience from Johnny, from her pulse nearly flatlining, to the sense of wild-hopelessly from the botched job, leaves V a shell. She sniffles, leaks, and begins to feel tears burn her eyes.

_ Has she cried since Jackie? Sure _ , she's been close, but has she actually fuckin' cried?  _ Well, no time like the present.  _

There, staring at the blurry pool of her own stomach acid, V cries. It comes on slow, almost more a physical reaction to the retching, but… she gets there. After a few minutes, she's holding her face in both hands—fingernails sharp at her fleshy skin—and leaking snot, tears, and puke-laced saliva. It's revolting. Obscene. But it's happening. There's no plugging the hole...

V spends what feels like days tucked away, hanging half in and out of the Quadra, crying in alternating sniffles and starving, gasping sobs. Tears squirt over her lashes until she tastes nothing of the brine in them, only the bitter paste of runny makeup and saccharin snot. In this lapse of time, the alert icon for her pounding heart fades; notifications run across her peripherals indicating her acetylcholine levels are rising as intended. 

Slowly, eventually, she breathes without pain or starvation. 

_ 'See. Told'ya so. Now stand up.' _

V gradually sits up, locks her car, and makes her way to the elevators. Johnny is a constant shadow beside her, nearly a threat but… feeling more and more like a friend, somehow. She wants to say something—something like thanks, but Johnny just throws her a sad smile and lights up another cigarette. He knows anyway. No need to voice it, she realizes. 

V slumps back against a bank of holo screens in the elevator, ripping into the latest supplement from Mancho, backed by rich female moans of pleasure.

The blatant sexualization of marketable steroids gets her brain zapping between disconnected thoughts: her missing pinky, sore muscles, fibrous material both 'ganic and chrome, Dum Dum, fucking… moaning louder than her walls can contain. 

V lets out a breath as Johnny rolls his eyes beside her and wiggles the four fingers on her left hand until the numbness finally fades into a gross throb.

"Think I'll be able to pull off a gold pinky? Or do I bite the bullet and get the whole thing amputated?"

_ 'Watch it, kid. Don't go stealin' my look just yet. Need to get you inside ASAP. Never know where Arasaka loyalists are hiding. Like fuckin' roaches… even nukes don't keep 'em down for long.' _

"No, no, they don't," she agrees, reliving some of Johnny's faded memories of his final days.

Despite the visible wreck she offers, few look twice. V's proud of her lil' hovel most days, but tonight, she's grateful. The fact that her anxiety isn't triggered by lingering eyes—eyes that could belong to anyone—means the short walk through the gym and the cafe leaves her feeling nigh invisible. And, by the time she reaches her door, her severed pinky no longer bleeds. A smear of red gunk is all the trace she leaves around the lock before the thick, metal door slides open. 

Immediately, the smell of sweated-chrome coats her senses. 

An old tear spills out her eye, down her inky cheek, and rolls into the corner of her gold-smeared mouth. V takes a long step into her apartment and comes face to face with seven red optics and a thin, pierced frown. 

"The fuck happened to you?” Dum Dum snarls her up and down, lips creasing with concern he won't or can't convey with bright, Spider reds.

_ 'Jesus Christ… an' you call me a parasite?' _

V blinks, barely making out the many varied details of the borg's face, only the loudest features. It's not some crazed cyberpsycho out for revenge—it's just… just Dum Dum. And she… she doesn't know what else to do but exhale the evening, close the distance between them and anchor her body against his, falling into musky metal like a corpse dead on a gurney. 

The borg-hole inhales through rust and heated metal at the sudden contact but adjusts his stance to keep her upright.  _ Considerate _ , V thinks clearly. Very intimate… maybe… which begs the question: what's he even doing here? Fuckin' audacity to walk into her privacy again and now, after whatever shit went down with the Militech gig fresh between 'em.

V wants to say something, perhaps tell him off even, but he's burning hot, and it's—he's—just what she needs right now.

Something itches down the side of her arm where several knicks from Oda's mantis blades made contact; she thinks it might be Dum Dum's plastic-padded digits stroking the wounds, but she's not positive. Now that she's home, hidden away—V hopes—all the pain her adrenaline-soaked brain ignored comes upon livened nerves. She hurts, and another tear slides over puffy lids to stain chrome cyberware.

Against his chest, just at the edge of synthetic knit skin and hot alloy, V mashes her lips and mumbles, "... dorph me."

"Yeah, fine," he scrapes out.

V's eyes drift close as he searches his pockets, barely jostling her. Time drifts in and out of reality as new muscles throbs, but she doesn't have to wait long before the mouth of an inhaler nudges her lips, begging to be let in. Cybernetic fingers thread through her hair at her nape, harsh but not ungentle. V groans in response—a near parody of the sexualized moans from the ad in the elevator. It isn't as embarrassing as it should be, so she opens wide while Dum Dum tips her head back the rest of the way.

_ ‘See ya later, then.’ _

Chemical coolness fills her mouth, her throat, and downward, soaking her lungs in synthetic feel-good. Johnny fades from the back of her mind as the dorph pulls her into a warm embrace, squeezing her like a lover until she's begging for another hit as if it's another dose of cum she wants. The vulgarity in her tone when she says 'hit me' doesn't go amiss. 

"Bottom's up, Princess," Dum Dum rasps in husked metal, "Take it nice'n slow for me. Yeah…  _ yeah _ , just like that." 

Encouraging growls color her cheeks with a blush, but it could be the dorph too—could be lots of things. Though, each time she swallows another hit, those other things mean less and less and… less. One after another, V begs and receives. More than six shots total swim in her core until he's pulling the inhaler away.

V thinks she hears him take one or two puffs for himself, but her mind's too expanded—too dorphed to concern herself with a single fucking thing. 

Ripe fruit… mushy and sweet… her brain oozing with honey-juice...

… she tries to grab at the buckle beneath his navel... to lather her wet tongue over his cock—tries to remember where her fingers are, but stumbles, seized by the wrists and spurned...

"Over here," Dum Dum orders through sound waves the color of mint ice-cream, "dockin' your pussy in a dorph-hole ain't why 'm here," a pause to groan when she sways hard into his body heat, "Yeah, right here."

V mumbles something Jackie told her back when they were chin-deep in concrete, about to get carted off by the pigs, but when Dum Dum makes a sound for her to repeat herself, nothing comes out but a backward inhale. He presses her against something cold, and V shivers. A loud clatter strikes the tiles, echoing sharply. She rolls her eyes, trying to focus on his fuzzy reds but her orbs tumble too far back, peering into her skull where there's nothing but silhouetted veins pulsing slowly. 

_ Out of my mind, _ she thinks to herself… finally, alone once more with her thoughts. 

Around her waist, hands of gloved-steel grab, bruise, and lift. For a moment, she's floating like the goldfish—like the dragon—higher and higher… higher still. 

Dum Dum sets her down on the edge of the sink, shoving her back by the sternum twice as if she was close to falling forward. But up in the clouds like this, does it really matter if she flips forward and shatters her front teeth?

"Gonna watch you rollin' just in case. Die next week, wanna keep ya alive tonight. Fuck—" he curses, abruptly grabbing her left wrist. 

A cotton throb heats up where her pinky used to be. For some reason, V smiles when his plastic-pads feel around her knuckles, teasing the edges of coagulated black still clinging to the sliced skin. The pull of scabs stings, but the pain is distant, unreachable.

"Preem. You'll look real chrome with ah gold poker. Even somethin' like mine… yeah.”

He runs her faucet. Next second a cold cloth is scrubbing done her face, in the corners of her nose and beneath her eyes, cleaning her messy face until her skin hums from the contact.

“Don' need that flesh anyway. Micro-rotors n' gold nerve filaments, try tensile-strength with all the fixin's,” he goes on while dragging rinsed a wrung swipes down her bare arms and collarbones, “Even got somethin' high-end I'll part with."

V only smiles and smiles and smiles wider, watching Dum Dum's face melt into a kaleidoscope of neon crimson and liquid metals. If he has his way, she'll be too borged out for Johnny to take over. There'll be no flesh left for him to inhabit… unless not even that will stop the engram from slipping into her being.

Twinges of pain come now and then—a shape hiss one second then a shuddering sigh the next. It isn't until she's floating again, a paper plane in her apartment, cascading into a rumpled pile of bedsheets and fumbling again at the borg leaning over her that V  _ wants _ . She needs—needs him to dock her now because if it kills her, she won't feel the rips of pain with all this dorph turning her insides to cream and sugar. 

"Fuck me…" she begs.

Dum Dum's face swirls with color and emotion. Cyberware-heat wraps across her front, pulling her nipples into stiff peaks. 

V opens her mouth to ask him sweetly, but her fingers can't latch on, and her breathing stills. Oxygen abandons her cells in favor of pure, refined overdose, and only when she's going cold—feeling her shell crack open—does Dum Dum penetrate her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonder how long it's been since Dum Dum got head? 
> 
> Big thanks to emdashesnsemicolons, Tealicious, gatesgates, Katargo, Liala, ForGodsSake, Borgie, and NoitaUmbra for their wonderful comments. Again, reading them makes me smile and makes me realize there's alotta fucked up people out there JUST like me. <3

V's overdosing—sinking through her sheets into a pool of darkness—and instead of takin' opportunity where it lays, Dum Dum slams the side of his fist into her chest. The antag-hypo punctures the meat between her ribs like oil-butter, sliding through cotton, 'ganic flesh, tendon, and dense muscle. A heartbeat later, she's gulping down the second-hand air from Dum Dum's open-mouthed breathing above her. 

V blinks in stark clarity, clear-headed, and comes to staring at a spider-eyed borg's frown glaring down at her.

"Guessin' that might've been lace ah' stuck in your mouth. Cut it real close, V. Was cuttin' close enough to leave that fuckin’ Rockerboy flatlined with ya."

V squeezes her eyes shut, hyperventilating through her teeth as sensations upon sensations piledrive her body, overturning the weightless high. There's never been reason for V to experience this ripping whiz of endorphin antagonists. It's… awful. She sniffles for two-seconds in a daze that feels like two days, every upsetting memory overlapping. Even the happy ones fall in a blue pool for a dense moment before Dum Dum slaps his hands in front of her face, snapping her outta the hole into raw reality once more.

"Fuck! What the—the f'fuck was that?!"

"Standard dorph-antagonist mixed with an adrenal cocktail. Classic shit. Not somethin' ya leave at home. 'Specially when you've overindulged yur lace."

"I… I huffed that much fucking lace?" V doesn't remember, just knows it must've been better than what she's feelin' now. "Fuck… this pain's… make it stop." 

Shakin' like a busted piston, she lifts up her left hand. 

Her pinky finger's been quarter-sliced and folded tightly over exposed bone. The shred’s been stapled securely and covered in a lather of that super-sealer medical glue she keeps in her medicine cabinet. But… fuck, it feels like a lit flame now.

"Pain ain't gonna last much longer," the borg-hole informs, gettin' all articulate with his knowledge, "Comin' outta that dorph hole hard's gonna throw you into hyper-sense. Two more minutes, max. Gotta breathe."

All V can do is take his advice and breathe through the agony—the waves building in tension and tight, stiff spasms. Eventually, the peak ebbs, and, like he said, fades. V lays there, drenched in sweat, chest heaving under the thin, skin-stuck tank, and curses Oda for the finger that still throbs... 

“Fuckin’ Takemura,” she curses him too. This evenin’s been a cluster fuck unlike few V’s had before.

"That the fixer you traded the digit for?” Dum Dum asks, crouching down beside the bed to grip her left wrist in hand, "Mantis for sure—got two phalanges missin'. Fuckin' weird it didn't get more o' these lil' piggies."

"... you're here," she rasps.

"Why are you here?" The words come out clogged by old dorph and bile, but it's a valid question. They didn't leave that Militech gig happy having ever met one another. Last thing V expected to find standing in her apartment was the Maelstromer that called her an _'emotion-blowing 'ganic bitch_ ’ as well as a couple other colorful terms... like a _coward_ for one...

Dum Dum tips his head back, shows a peak of chrome teeth like a vicious beast starved under a beam at night and levels his shoulders. His optics flash for a moment—black to red—before the loose-lipped expression thins a bit, "Ghostin' my messages an’ my calls. Didn't like that. Figured I’d stop by, see what was so fuckin’ important.”

Oddly enough, V feels the urge to kiss him despite the garbage that'd come outta both of their mouths less than twenty-four hours ago. She’s not fond of the stalker vibes he’s exuding but it’d be a lie to say she didn’t appreciate finding him waiting for her like some stray cat that got fed a few times.

"So, what? You're my dealer, fuck buddy, _and_ stalker then? Or you just that butt hurt?"

_'What'd I tell you,'_ Johnny enters from nothingness.

V twitches at the rattle his voice has on her insides. She hadn’t expected him back so soon after her dorph hole. He's leaning against the window, barely free of screen tears, haloed by the neon glitter of Night City. Her lips screw tight, turning once more to Dum Dum, who's smirking on one side.

Without warning, the borg cranes his neck to the window—empty as far as he knows—and swipes a modded tongue across his lower lip, "Rockerboy makin' sure I don't shove anymore hits down your throat?"

_'The fuck he say?'_

Half-speechless, she fumbles over her own tongue until Dum Dum emits a dark, abrasive chuckle the color of steel wool and meaty, pink lung.

"Look, secret ghosts aside, bitch's right sometimes. Gonked it up," his jerky movements convey his message: he messed things up between them. 

_Understatement_ , V thinks but bites her tongue to see where else his lips go.

"Figured you weren't the type've 'ganic girl to get all existential on me for no reason. Solo types don't swing that way, so dug around. Dropped ah couple tabs in Royce's smash to get 'im talkin' bout deets on that stolen relic. Leaks showed up on the edge too," his Spider Red Eyes blink again, part of his face loosening once more, "... so, Johnny Silverhand, yeah? He feelin' what you feel? Felt that chomp at Totentanz… the stuff in yur ride?"

For a second, V doesn't know what to say or how to respond. Only a few times has she thought about explaining it to the small group of chooms she has left, but to Dum Dum… she wouldn't have managed on her own. Seemed too raw a thing to confess to a borg that huffed dorph and acted in several XBD's... unofficially, but assumed. 

Johnny's stayed relatively quiet—obedient almost—but shoves another cigarette between his teeth. She can feel his annoyance like heat against her face but ignores it for now.

Despite the botched gig, the vomit, and tears, the dorph hole to end 'em all… she laughs. It's not a bold sound, just a short, shallow chuckle that's as infectious as unwarranted. Dum Dum joins her, however more grated and steel-baritone it is. 

With a deep breath, V admits, "Engram ain’t subtle if that’s what you’re getting at. Fucker might just be keeping me on edge by pretending he likes getting finger blasted."

Dum Dum's optics flash again, but his grin drops into a comical frown, muscles around his upper red furrowing, "Nasty. Gonk gettin' off on your nut like that. Didn't make 'em for him."

V's nose wrinkles, glancing up at Johnny who's turned around, looking out the window, chain-smoking in silence.

"Huh, never thought about it like that. Makes 'im a real deviant then, doesn't it?" She's trying to goad the engram into some scathing comment, but Johnny huffs out a toxic cloud and continues with the cold shoulder. "Mainly prefers filling my head with nicotine and adding light commentary when I’m busy. Dorph seems to shut him up, tho."

Dum Dum's lips stretch wide, piercings cutting into the thin, soft skin of his mouth, "Rockerboy, used to hit the smash hard. Don' think he was big on the drugs. Real pussy hound—cock sucker too. 'Member readin' scream sheets 'bout the groupies he'd throw down on stage. Reason's why I prefer the classics. SAMURAI knew how to put on shows."

_'Hmph, fuckin' junkie knows his shit at least.'_

V sends Johnny a brief glare. Her head's still a dull throb enough without conversing with two gonks at once. Brows arched in question, she turns back to Dum Dum, "This where you tell me you're old enough to remember those show days?"

"Fuck no!" He bites, picking erratically at her bedsheets, "Old enough to like what ah' like, tho, an’ I ain’t robbin’ no cradle by tickling your guts," he finishes as if he isn’t making eyes at her thin tank top. 

Despite his emotionless optics, Dum Dum's synth skin bunches around his metal chassis in ways that's just as expressive as anything. The way his sharp thumb digs through rumpled sheets to trace the thin tendon protruding from her inner wrist also says plenty. 

"Liking this preem' ganic body too—fuckin' suck to see some ancient gonk havin' fun in it."

V curls onto her side and throws him a tired smirk. Her gaze drifts from his crimson orbs to the way the borg's metal grip starts coiling around her left hand. The dichotomy of 'ganic flesh, marred and puffy from trauma, within a cage of plastic-chipped metal stirs her guts. She likes it more than she should. Perhaps, the fucker was right to be so pissed off after the Militech gig—maybe she's a coward like he snarled, and the fear of death isn't really what's at stake. 

"You're right, by the way," V admits, still staring at their loosely clasped hands resting between them.

"Bout what?"

"About everything you said before—about how I—"

"Nah," he cuts her off, "me bein' soft is all. Gig was a wash o’ sense. Forget it. Besides, got yur cred right here." He gestures with a spike-modded chin to the many flak pockets across his ribs. "Scored an MG53 Injector from the batch for ya too. Mine slid right in with nary a lick o' lubricant. Figured I'd sell ya on it. Might net you a preem time with whatever ya use it for."

Staring at her mangled but tended pinky stub, V arches a brow, "Already chipped in? How's it runnin'?"

"Pimped throughout," his grin stretches chrome and even, "Gouged out some meat and wire earlier. Ten minutes later, like new. Legit. Felt everythin' but that's half the fun."

From one of his pockets, he drags out a cred chip, places it on the bed beside her stomach, and digs a lil' deeper, presenting a small, red piston-shaped mod. Three gold connectors jut from the side, crowning a long filament that ends in a plastic-wrapped bundle of delicate connectors. It's inconspicuous as fuck and oddly elegant, like some exotic origami flower.

_'Really gonna shove some Maelstrom-approved tech in your nodes?'_

Her eyes drift over to Johnny again, smoking in the shadows.

"Guess it wouldn't hurt to have Vik check it over. Now that I'm wanted in connection with two Arasaka deaths, I'm gonna need all the tools I can get."

Dum Dum makes a noise somewhere between spleen and throat, like a proud rattle. He cocks his head to the side with a lewd sorta smile and releases her wrist to scratch several metal digits through purple tresses, grabbing her scalp and forcing her eye to red optics.

"Mega gigs like that get's me fuckin' hot," he growls on an electric exhale.

"That ah’ threat?"

A slow, dangerous smirk digs into the dermal piercings scattered in his face, sending a leak of arousal into her skivvies. She lowers her lashes, feeling beyond wrecked by the evening, but hungry… and oddly thoughtless. Anxiety's a distant concept having been overused to its fullest. All that's left is this ache V's been getting worse at ignoring, so… she sneaks her fingers beneath the shoulder strap of Dum Dum's flak jacket and yanks him closer.

A breath later, V's fighting with the buckles around his sides, fumbling slightly at the worn canvas and brass clasps. She gasps for a second once it’s gone and pulls his naked chest—a mantle of synthetic and 'ganic stretched around chrome—against her. Who cares if it's more intimate than she'd thought when contemplating messin' with borgs like him. Surprising, sure… but it's preem—preem enough to spread her thighs wide and urged his hips between 'em.

Dum Dum sighs through his mutilated nostrils and shoves a thick arm under her back, squeezing their bodies together. Abrasive plastic finger pads dig into the neck of her tank top, between sweat-damp tits, and shred the neckline until one breast is being jiggled free. His segmented digits grip, massage, and shove the globe’s tip into his brutal mouth. 

V lets out a soft sound, something she likes as much as she doesn't… but—

"... c—careful," it comes out unconsciously as his chrome fangs bite the black ring in her nipple, flicking it inside his mouth, sucking hard and sloppy unlike before… when he was eating her out…

Drool spills around her breast, adding to old sweat and renewed adrenaline.

Dum Dum releases her nipple with a wet pop, snaps viciously just at the edge of her puckered flesh, then proceeds to rip the rest of her tank down the middle, throwing the twin halves open. And V lets him. Doesn't matter how much she loves that top; it died for a good cause as far as she's concerned. 

"Figured you for easy pussy moment ya invite me to sit on that couch," before V can get offended, he gives her other nipple a wet lick and continues against the warm, thin flesh, "Hard, yeah. Preem, for sure, but you looked hungry. Fuckin' Princess chompin' for chrome cock harder than titanium… knew you were after somethin' else." It still comes out like an insult welded into a compliment, but heat gathers between her thighs just the same. 

Arousal pools as Dum Dum's steel touch tightens around her back and rubs heat down the side of her ribs where the antag-hypo’s starting to bruise.

"Not easy," he clarifies, lips and teeth hot on her right nipple, "... jus’ desperate fer ah’ break."

V sighs, lift her thigh, and rests her calf over his hip, giving him just enough room—enough to feel his body-warmed digits wedge down her belly, under black denim and skivvies to the hot slice of pussy he's drenched with just a few choice words. 

"You're shit at playing hard to get," she says softly. 

"You want me. Only reason I come across the cock-starved Rimbo is that you want me to get this mod installed… don't ya?" 

He's snarling in the fat of her breast, frothin' a bit because she's right, but his retaliation is causing V to lose herself in the feel of a vibrating tongue lapping at her nipples and segmented metal fingers penetrating her cunt.

"Want me to chip in…" she gasps, driving her hips down, "so you don't have to feel guilty when you end up tearing me apart."

Dum Dum doesn't respond, just adjusts his wrist and forces another bare-metal digit through stiff fleshy muscle and swollen glands, raw-touching her soft tissue. Tears prick her sore eyes, but the pain is just another clone of the pleasure… 

His inhuman touch glides along wet folds, teasing her swollen clit just shy of trauma, forcing her body into a state of hyper-awareness just as intense as the aftershocks from the dorph hole… but so much better. The abrasive sound and shudder when he drags plastic paddings through her pubic hair makes her swallow. 

Old stomach bile carpets the back of her tongue, but it's nothing against the chemical-tang dorph left behind.

“Fuck… that feels good,” she whimpers. 

Teeth snag on her nipple ring, tease shy of bleeding then—when the pain nearly blankets the euphoria—he smacks his lips to the bud and licks it back to a steady, soft pulsing.

"Wanna see it?" Dum Dum grates out, suddenly sliding up her body to press his lips to the corner of her parted, panting mouth.

" _Ahhh—_ " she whines as his fingers pinch her clit, trapping the nerve cluster in tight, short circles that fan waves of fructose-flavored pleasure into her groin.

That drenched, humming tongue licks a long line up the side of her face before Dum Dum digs his chrome teeth in the lobe of her ear, "Got it all clipped up for ya—real preem for that fragile lil' 'ganic cunt. 'Less you _wanna_ chip in an' take it all… don' mind ripping you open long as ya heal back in time for me to do it again."

"... _fuck_ ," V whimpers again, rocking slowly down as Dum Dum lets her pussy swallow up his fingers again. The sensation's too much, but she needs _too much_.

"Yes," she trembles, already forgetting about Johnny watching—feeling—the whole thing from his seat by the window. She tries to shake it off—tries to get his voyeurism off her skull, but he blows out a heavy cloud that falls over her like broken glitter.

_'Forget about me for a while. I'll keep my nose off your ass. Promise.'_

Johnny's unwilling to invade but is still so very close to her thoughts while this Maelstromer handles her like he likes her… but V can pretend it's just the two of them; 'ganic and chrome. As good as his fingers are—as close as she is right now—she can’t cum.

"Show me," she says on another moan, more broken this time as the borg licks rough patches along her throat, two fingers deep now, "... wouldn’t wanna flatline without seeing this fucking monster, ya know.”

Dum Dum takes a bite of her pulse, lathers his tongue down her carotid until her blood's vibrating, and utters, "Yeah, sure. Fuckin' asked for it, tho…"

V feels a hot thrill run down her spine, and then she's cold, empty, and naked from the waist up while Dum Dum sits back on his heels, tendons taut and muscles thick beneath real and synth skin. Those gloved-hands of metal and plastic loop in his dark, splatter canvas pants, undoing a short series of snaps and buckles. 

She swallows, sits up on her elbows, and stares heatedly down her own naked chest, tense stomach, and up towards the incredible abomination suddenly laid bare before her.

"That's…" V's eyes stretch wide, taking in the alienesque sight of Dum Dum's cock, "... is that custom?" It's a silly question when considering the snowflake rarity of each Maelstromer but… she's never seen anything like this. Everything down to their finger joints seems custom ripped; so, why Dum Dum's dick wouldn't be the same, V's can't reason. 

"Whatcha think? Preem meat. Kept as much 'ganic nerves as I wanna fuck with." It's hard to look away, but she glimpses his face for a flash: chrome chompers grinning, Spider Red Eyes bright, tongue pinched between his teeth… practically vibrating. 

Without waiting for her to say somethin' Dum Dum grasps the base of his cock and continues, "Got innards embellished with bioplastic vessels and triple-lace coolant throughout. Flexi-shell grafted with REALskin, fills with synth blood until it hits resistance: one size fits all."

"Jesus fucking Christ…" she colors.

_‘No fucking shit. Jesus.’_

"Nah, primate deities ain't got nothin' to do with this—this's all me.” His obnoxious grin twitches a bit as V chews her lip in silent marvel, "What's wrong? Can't handle it just by lookin?"

As she's searching for descriptors for what she's seeing, Dum Dum finally gets the inhaler of lace between his teeth, presses down, and rips it hard. Almost like some defense mechanism, she thinks.

"You already forget I nearly overdosed on that shit twenty-minutes ago, huh?"

Dum Dum just flashes her that brilliant chrome grin that catches all the neon glow of Night City through her windowpane and lets a cool jet of chemical frost exhale out his crowned nostrils. The churning mass poised against his stomach undulates as if in response, but V doesn't know how to reply without her lips curling upwards, so she scoots a lil' closer and cracks her knuckles. As her fingers hover several inches near, the air grows toxic with heat and moisture as if his dick produces its own atmosphere, which—when V thinks about it logically—is fucking ridiculous.

She swallows audibly, ignoring the thin, iron-snicker of amusement from the egotistical borg hole, and finally gives his cock a cautious touch. Just a single glossy trace of his cockhead with the pad of her finger.

An almost inaudible hiss precludes Dum Dum bringing the inhaler back to his mouth for another shaky hit. 

For a second, V considers this cock of his being more sensitive than previously implied. It makes sense for a borg as chromed out as him to guard a fair few sensitivities. Even among Maelstromers, it seems like they have a love/hate relationship with 'ganic things… especially the softest parts. 

A mental imagine of Dum Dum in whatever hovel he calls home, borg-cock in his fist, thinkin’ of her while cumming too soon—too quickly. V likes to think he’s busted a fair few nuts with her in mind, despite how hard he’ll say dorph is just as good. Why have such an eddie-rich cock if it’s not put through a few paces?

Between real skin, synth-graphs and cyberware, her nails carefully glide. 

“Go on, claw it up. Fuckin’ MG53‘ll fix it right up.”

The Frankenstein organ pulses a dim red color deep inside that floods between seams and glows under veiny flesh. It reminds her of low-level light therapy she's seen a couple times at Ripperdocs, but aesthetically it matches pretty preem to his optics.

"I’ll pass becoming a dick mutilator, thanks. But what’s with the glow? Function or fashion?" V teases, resting her tender left hand over his inner thigh to slowly press him back until he digs in, spine to the bed's wall. For a second, he looks spooked by the half-domineering action, then settles almost cautiously back, watching her as he starts explaining his tech-knowledge with relish. 

"Red light's preem at producing biochemical reactions in cells. Makes it so mitochondria work overtime, means the flesh runs as good as chrome," Dum Dum shows his bright teeth again, lower lip twitching slightly, "Reduces need for extra coolant arteries, negates pesky cell death when shit gets too hot. Laymen’s, if yur gonked in the head, means this baby can go all night.”

She arches her brows—impressed—while tracing an exceptionally rugged seam down one side that's a mirror of what's on the other side—something like petal-shaped slits of fibrous polymer. 

"Hmph, yeah,” she takes a breath, “well, it's big, but I was imagining something gargantuan. Ya know, terrifying to behold.” It’s said with a sly expression, which probably looks less appealing with the makeup residue V can still feel when her eyes crease. 

Dum Dum barely flinches, just slumped forward, gives his cock and wiggle and dares, "Ain't gonna grow big n' strong if all yur doin' is lookin' at it. Expansion triggers when it makes contact with moisture."

"Well, isn't that convenient?"

V wraps her palm above where his grip sits tight around the base. She squeezes the hot girth, feeling, more than hearing, the ripple effect such contact has on him. Even her mattress squeals as Dum Dum reigns in the rocking tremble in his joints. Figures, she’d be right about his sensitivity.

V rubs her thumb against his metal palm, briefly looking up at his face for a reaction. He’s thin-lipped and tense, nothin’ like he sounds. She watches, sucking at her lower lip where the flavor of his tongue still lingers and massages the 'ganic edges of cock only to hear his heart thud in response.

She squeezes hard when his face doesn’t twitch, then does it again for good measure.

Dum Dum snarls, goes to shove more black lace between his teeth, but V gives three inches a tight stroke, and the plunger drops back to the bed; the borg uttering ripping growls and curses of _Fuck!_

"Here's hoping you didn't chip in one of those 'flavor enhancers' with this custom package," she mentions under her breath, husky and smooth with a smirk. 

"Only one way to find out."

"Hm," V sounds, lathering her thumb over the fleshy slit beading out clear moisture. 

_‘Can’t believe you’re thinkin’ of putting your mouth on that thing. Who knows where it’s been.’_

The metallic, open-mouthed breathing her attention gets her is enough to drown out Johnny’s disappointment. Anything vulnerable, even a weak rasping moan, from the big bad Maelstromer is good enough to make her drip. It's pretty damn apparent that, now that his cocks out, he wants her lips wrapped around it and—despite Johnny trying to make her feel guilty—an old rebellious streak just makes the idea even more attractive. 

Slowly, she licks her lower lip, tasting the delicate residue of gold paint but mostly the powder-soft texture of raw skin. The rest will come off along this chrome cock if she gives into temptation and sucks him off. It's only fair, after all. And, even if it wasn't, V's been wanting to give him head since she saw him back at All Foods. The second Dum Dum stood up to Jackie despite the choom having a foot on 'im, V pictured getting face fucked by him—violently. 

Took real balls to square off against an ex-Valentino like that. And, for a moment, she realizes this’s the first time she’s thought about Jackie without wanting to hit someone. 

"If I kiss it, you gonna shove it down my throat?"

"Kiss it, an' I'll kiss ya back…"

“Deal.” V presses her knees together and settles in between his open legs. Dum Dum exhales roughly and releases his cock into her grip. Oddly enough, a weird optical illusion dissipates, leaving her staring at a chrome dick running the length of a Spunky Monkey can now that it's resting in her much smaller hand.

_'I'll be damned. Hard to believe that's original inches, hmph.'_

V almost—almost turns 'round, but instead, she worries her lower lip, silently agreeing with Johnny Silverhand and takes the plunge. 

No flavor enhancers, just the warm musky stain of precum and hot iron tang of mods. The glaze it leaves over her tastebuds makes her moan, almost loud enough to cover up the gutted sound Dum Dum makes. Like a cross between some backfiring motorcycle and a ritualistic stabbing, he growls. The noise gets under her skin, makes her do stupid shit like press her palms flat to his abdominals and deep throat him until she gags.

"Fuck—fuckin’ preem, yeah…”

V swallows and gags again, nearly retching, but it's nothing but a dry heave thanks to her adrenaline vomit earlier. 

“Fuckin’ tight— _hnnn!_ ”

His metal digits hit her forehead, glide tight in her side-swept bangs, then fists her scalp… but it isn't to force her down...

Dum Dum draws her off his cock until only the stitched frenulum—which she only just now realizes is pierced with two snug metal loops—lays against her moist lower lip. He's panting over metal coals and desperation, chrome dick pulsing bright at its core. The flesh of his cockhead flares only for clean precum to drool out the slit. 

He carefully peels her left hand off his stomach, resting it in the sheets beside his thigh, and grumbles, “Bust those stitches an’ I’ll bust a load down yur throat without warning.”

This uncanny consideration should be expected at this point, but V just stares dumbfounded while he fists the monstrosity between his legs and gives it a thick pull. Dum Dum rubs the tip against her bottom teeth, making those wretched sounds of pleasure with each exhale. V keeps waiting for him to force her back down, but he doesn't, just coats her lips in salty precum while catching his breath.

As his movement slows, V smiles and gives him a flick of her tongue.

"Easy, Princess… fuckin' easy with that soft shit."

A smirk forms against his cock as her eyes flash up to the painful expression etched beneath red optics, "Really that close to busting your nut, huh? Didn't figure you'd be so sensitive." It's a lie. She's assumed it before, but it's fun to know she was right—that despite all his mods, it's only made what flesh he left behind more receptive.

Dum Dum bares his teeth, yanks her by the scalp, and mashes her lips and teeth against slick chromed cock. Finally, actin’ like the Maelstromer he is.

“Been couple years since ah’ thought about gettin’ head. Took hard tail to perk this dick up, ya know,” he rips each word out like it’s a lodged knife, “... didn’t think you’d willingly suck my cock—didn’t know what yur fuckin’ game was— _fuck…_ _fuck_ that’s preem _shit…_ ”

V sorta hates how much his bullshit adds to the boiling arousal starting to swirl into something tightly coiled. She swallows down a large mouthful and sucks, only to startle as his other hand takes a fistful of jean-clad ass, dragging her parallel while mid-slurp. Muscles in her side and shoulder stretch—burning softly—as her mouth’s guided by the metal digits in her hair. 

V’s lips, tongue, and teeth attend the swelling mass of chrome and flesh while Dum Dum yanks her jeans down her plump ass.

“Can still feel this,” he growls electric and heater, teasing her sticky folds which are even more tender after his earlier fingering, “Real wet—real fuckin’ hot. Pussy like ah’ vice. Feel it?”

  
  


A curse muffles around his cock as V bobs up and down, taking two unlubricated fingers of sharp segments deep inside with a hard suck. She draws her cheeks tight around several inches, groans, and shifts an elbow into his stomach to support the sudden attention. 

The force of Dum Dum’s skilled fingering bends her at her waist, delving in a twisted curl to scrape her inner nerves. Tears leak but don't fall… but _fuck_ if it's not tempting. Each thrust comes with a sharp bite, but the deep rubbing from moistened plastic is as addicting as the dorph she overdosed on.

"Too rough?" Dum Dum asks, half-snarl, half-grated whisper. He's not really concerned because his thrusting doesn't slow… doesn't soften—he just lays a cold thumb against her puckered hole and finger fucks her cunt until she's cooing around chrome cock like a messy JoyToy. 

"N—naw," he stutters when she takes him to the back of her throat again, tugging her up to the turgid head just before his girth rapidly enlarges. 

"... cock'll fuckin' choke ya till yur purple… just—just give it ah couples kisses an' I'll finish myself off."

V takes a moment to breathe in deep, lips lightly pressed to the blubbering tip as his fingers work her with AI-brained precision. She squeezes her eyes shut, blocking out Johnny, who's spying on the borg cock that's now doubled in thickness—pulsing horror-red while she starts to tremble, about to cum.

Usually, she's never been a girl that got those deep orgasms easily. Eclipses like that took more work than they were worth, but Dum Dum knows where to touch. His thumb bends, threatening to penetrate her ass, but the possibility is only making her breathe faster…

"I'm gonna come if you don't—"

His grip on the top of her head tightens, shutting her up with a shallow mouthful again, forcing only the first inch between her teeth to wet her tongue. The flavor, texture, and boiling heat sends a violent thrum down her belly, feeding the pre-orgasmic licks flicking from his fingers. 

V sucks obnoxiously loud. Wet, thick snaps of saliva and precum mix, dribbling down her chin. Her tongue snakes down, rubbing his pierced frenulum and then up to wiggle hard into the bleeding slit until he's making as much noise as she is.

"Wha—whatcha, where ya want it? Tits or… _mmmmnn, innards_?!"

She's too lost in the sensation of flesh and unrelenting metal framing synthetic material and pounding veins of hot blood—synth and red—to take her lips off the fluttering pulse in his cockhead. 

Her insides clench, drawing his digits deeper as her body leaks and spills. V digs her bottom teeth into the underside of sutured dick but jolts off with a moist pop as a shocking vibration travels up her spine. 

Pleasure. White-hot. Brutal channels like electrical bridges shoot from his fingertips into her pelvis, back, and brain. Same vibrations from his tongue, but dirty—old tech—rattling her like some of the best synthetic fuck machines on the market.

"... _haaaa—ahh_ ," Dum Dum hisses; it's a quiet rattle, like a mainframe overheating into obsolescence. 

The numb pressure around her scalp tears away, metal fingers taking several loose purple strands as the big-dicked borg grapples the pulsing cock beneath her chin. His fist squeezes, forcing vivid red light into the bed's alcove while V grabs at his neck and stomach as her body backs up onto his fingers, fucking herself relentlessly—mindless.

Transfixed in her melt-brain state of orgasm, she manages to watch each piston swipe of brilliant dick rubbed raw by Dum Dum's grip. 

As she cums hard enough to feel it dig wires around her skull, the first splatter string of his jizz barely feels like anything. The second rope lands up between them, half drooling down his stomach and her chest. It's hot—molten hot like boiling coolant.

"... ahh—fuck… _fuck!_ " He chokes, hissing between strangled gulps of air. 

V expects more shit-talk or something vulgar when he comes, but… the soft hisses are somehow more thrilling, even adding another layer to the arching euphoria peaking all over her. V watches, swallowing air with every moan until she's just a mass of quivering 'ganic flesh, cumming and drinking down the visuals greedily.

Once he finishes, V slumps against the borg, face hot and clammy in the dip between his neck and shoulder, tits dripping globs of semen down her belly. The four-fingered hand she has awkwardly braced along a slope of hard muscle on his abdomen is damp and sticky with stray drops of jizz… and yet, V isn't revolted by any of it nor does it really hurt.

Taking a stifled breath against his throat, V exhales a tired laugh, "We're two for three with the vibrating appendage thing… don't tell me your—"

Wet, metal fingers slide out of her quickly—all those raised segments twanging against loose, sensitive ribbed flesh, enough to take her breath away.

"Three for three, V. This cock'll do whatever ya fuckin' want, whatever ya need," he replies, sounding smothered in overclocked machinery and gritty smoke—electric fires burning high in his vocal cords. But, there's a hint of something emotional there too that isn't the usual post glow of gettin' your rocks off. 

V peels herself off him cautiously. She wants to bury herself under his skin, become something that isn’t herself… maybe even hide from reality, but more than that she feels too good pressed up against him, so she removes herself and flops back on the bed with a forced laugh. She fails at hiding the genuine crease beneath her eyes but pretends like they’re not there. 

Immediately, she's cold…

Dum Dum watches her in a way she can't name—watching as his cum dries slowly across her naked, heaving front and watches more of her...

Despite the chill, V kicks off her rumpled jeans. The material is sweaty and claustrophobic; besides... doesn’t matter. Utter nakedness, nearly all 'ganic before him, doesn't make a real difference. Dum Dum's seen it all and felt it all. 

“Tired?” He asks darkly.

V sighs, shifting as her breasts bounce before his swaying gaze and stuffs a pillow under her head. The new angle allows her a vantage; she can see that he's still hard. She arches a brow as her lips quirk upwards, "Guessin' if I want to, you're up for more of the same, huh?"

A lethargic, easy smirk splits his face, tugging fetchingly at the dermal piercings sweeping his face. His optics flash—black then red—as he strokes that Frankenstein cock. His shoulders level out, chin up, and gives her a horrific, chrome grin, "Haven't gotten a good look at the pink princess. Spread those legs for me an' spread ‘em wide, wanna see how raw that 'ganic is jus' from some finger fun."

"... and what do I get out of it?" V asks, already bending her knees up and opening them wide.

Dum Dum's lips fall into an open-mouthed smirk, optics buzzing bright enough she feels heat smother across her pussy.

"Yeah, yeah… hold it right there," he growls—snarling electric soft—and releases his cock to pulse and undulate with mixed blood. 

Her heart hammers again. _132bpm_ and rising. 

Dum Dum descends upon her like a mechanical uber-beast. A spider sinking fangs into weakened prey. He wags his tongue as spit pools in the gauge holes of wired pulse-tech, dipping down until he's got her thighs in a gorilla grip and his mouth sealed over her cunt.

V's lashes flutter, rolling up to her ac vents as a cloud of stale nicotine and soft, vibrating pleasure washes over her. 

"B—better make me cum real hard… Johnny's watchin'..."

And he does. 

Dum Dum doesn't shy away from the voyeur, and neither does she. All V does is arch her back and grind down into the hungry, smacking mouth of a cyberpsycho obsessed with licking her pussy dry. It's… better than the dorph was—better than her fantasies could have promised, and so V digs her shoulders into the softness of her bed and draws aimless shapes over the smooth synth-scalp eating her out, moaning and babbling until she cums again… and again…

"... again."

Tomorrow she can go back to fearing for her life, right now, Dum Dum’s doing a swell job at making her forget life has an end.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's a tear in the matrix. V picks up Takemura's call finally, and Dum Dum skips out on afternoon delights to take care of some BD business.
> 
> I wanna give out a big fucking thank you to Tealicious, emdashesnsemicolons, LadySkeptic, TrashPanduh, JustAnotherSnakeCult, NoitaUmbra, Zireael07, biteyouo, Katargo, sendrine, ForGodsSake, chaoticmortal, TheLadyTheBeast, and SlapItOnABiscuit. I got a negative comment on the last chapter and you guys replied in mass with tons of support. Means a whole hell of a lot. <3

"There some reason ya need this fuck's signature on that thing? Guessin' my word means shit to ah 'ganic solo."

"A borg's promise was always worthless, don't take it personally," V says as they meander through the thick crowd down Gomorrah Strip, heading towards Misty's Esoterica.

"Yeah,” Dum Dum hisses in static, “Wanna get docked by this Ripperdoc, huh?"

“Pretty boy. Princess likes corpse Princes,” he says after snarling at someone that didn't give him the twelve-inches of personal space someone lookin' like him deserved.

"Vik isn’t some corpo ripper. Ya know… you’re charming when you're not dripping jealousy."

A vile, mechanical rip of disgust heats the back of her neck, but the Maelstromer says nothing in response, which lends some truth to the jealousy thing. For borgs like them, it's probably more a feeling of possession—owner's rights or some shit. Either way, V drops the itch to keep talking, they did enough of that when they woke up stuck together in bed...

Several people—chromed or otherwise—look spooked to see a lone Maelstrom on their afternoon route. Usually, a gang like there's travels in packs, despite looking more akin to solitary spiders than any wolf with a bite. V knows Dum Dum's more than ferocious enough to compare with any desert hound or badland cougar, but the aesthetic sticks. Even Johnny, waiting in front of the door, looks mildly amused by the gawking denizens of Night City. And V is only slightly distressed by how much she likes the attention, knowing she had this fearsome borg hole's cock in her mouth last night.

"Metaphysical shit—spiritual…” he muses in a rasp, “... preem."

V throws a confused look over her studded jacket and pauses, "Wait. You're actually into this stuff?"

Dum Dum pretends he doesn't hear her; instead, V watches him twist at the neck to eye-murder some unlucky corpo staring as they walk by. The chrome, snarling teeth that'd been tugging her nipple into sharp sparks twelve hours ago looks malicious as ever, bared in a threat of violence. 

Johnny blows a cloud of smoke in her face from the edge of the doorway and chuckles,  _ 'Gonk probably knows more about life n' death and all that wild in between better than you do. Just a fuckin' kid after all… what do you really know about what lies beyond?' _

" _ Ugh _ , shut up."

"What's that?!" Dum Dum half-barks. 

"Not you," V mutters, pushing open the door to Misty's Esoterica with that chakra-charged bell chime and the aroma of a billion dried herbs nestled into thick, nutty oils. There's nothing else that smells quite like Misty's place… never knew how much she liked it until Jackie died, and it became synonymous with the chooms cologne—of camaraderie and friendship. 

Behind her, Dum Dum leers loudly, amused by whatever it was that got her to verbally tell Johnny to can it. He follows close too, bumping stiff hips into her ass as they step into the otherworld of occult neon-dreams. 

Over at the counter, Misty doesn't seem shocked to see a Maelstromer's glaring red optics behind V's shoulder. The wild-haired healer just smiles on one side and stands up from her screamsheet. 

"Hey, V. Good to see you back." There's an ounce of sadness in her greeting, and V knows why. Maybe the other woman expected never to see her again… or perhaps she saw Jackie when she walked in just like V smells him in the air. 

Dum Dum doesn't bother reading the room or doesn't give a shit—either or—and shoves past V to close his fists around the counter. It'd be menacing if he didn't immediately open his chompers to talk prices.

"Real cheap lettin' gonks get their minds reset for thirty scratch. Oughta be fuckin' triple that!—whatcha charge fer implant tunin'?"

Misty only looks unnerved for a moment before leaning back to grab a datapad from under a stack of fashion screams. V can only watch while Johnny apparates in a pixel-cloud of dewy rain, staring down Misty's tuning chair,  _ 'Fuckers full of surprises. Think maybe you fried his processors last night?' _

_ No _ , she doesn't think that's the case, and he's not taking the piss either. 

V watches, slightly spooked, as Dum Dum books a special with a finger-gun transaction of eddies, much to Misty's serene delight. Business is business, and it's probably been a week since someone came in for actual esoteric work. 

Shaking off the oddity of it all, V walks through Johnny just to be a gonk and heads for the backdoor.

"Won't be long," she tells Misty, then pauses, looking through the counter’s plexiglass at a grinning Dum Dum leaning forward on his elbows, "She's got ripped Militech defense chipped into this place, so don't pull anything—"

"Just needin' some soul tuning after the preem work ya did on my flesh, Princess. Chill."

V wrinkles her nose and deltas out the door before she can catch whatever look Misty turns her way. Witch probably never thought much about the shit that turned V on, unless it was Jackie—which it wasn't ‘cept once at the start, but now she knows what gets their lil' solo friend hot. Fuckin' Maelstrom borg with a chrome dick and a tongue to die on. It'd be shameful if V wasn't so far removed from that feeling and coming to terms with the fact that Dum Dum wasn't like the usual borg holes.

In the back alley, the skinny street cat offers her scabby head with a mewl. 

V crouches low to thumb a crusty wound between its ears—new mark since last she saw it. From some brawl, no doubt. The feline purrs, meows once, then disappears around a smoldering trash bin where the hissing mechanisms of dorph junkies echo.

Down in Viktor's shop, the usual replay match is on; stuff so old even V's translator barely makes sense between the static. The self-proclaimed 'old Ripperdoc' looks up when she closes the metal xylophone gate behind her but waits until the gate clicks to greet her.

"V," he says in that molasses ease, "how's the chrome holding up?"

"Fine. Wanted to have you look this thing over for me," V pinches the tiny MG53 from her inner jacket pocket and sets it down on his desk. His box vidscreen's halogen glow makes the ruby casing look violet, eye-catching, and larger than it really is. "Off-market—or not yet on the market. Militech. Got a buddy that says it's preem. Wanna see if you can chip it."

Viktor hums unconsciously, plucking the mod up with two skinny three-point pincers. His lips thin, rubbing together for several seconds as he scrutinizes the dangling filaments. Few things chrome and shiny that pique V's interest these days, aside from a certain borg, but this… she's into it and not just because of the sexual promises Dum Dum bit into her skin last night.

As Viktor walks his wheeled chair to the lounge, V does her best to ignore the way her nipples—still raw—scrape against her MEATGRYNDR shirt. 

The Ripperdoc throws a switch, filling his station with the sound of running monitors, warm mainframes, and a dozen various power-up alerts. Like music, but dentist music on blue glass or somethin’.

"This looks like a derivative of epithelialization tech. Not exactly new, but last it was tested, back in the 60s, folks didn't handle it so well. Lots of Zombies were implanted."

V blinks in stupefaction. She doesn't understand the point of that.

“Why Zombies? Those guys just end up splattered on freeways or go out with bomb belts."

"Who knows," he says, fitting the MG53 Injector into a device that looks like a centrifuge docked a microwave, "Thing is, it kept 'em alive. Some just brain matter, but they still reacted to stimulus when in their labs post-evisceration. It was grim, but this looks—ah…" Viktor sighs, reading through crypto meant for a Ripperdocs smarts and not hers.

"Interesting. It's based on the epith-series alright, but this isn't a prototype."

V folds her arms beneath her chest, waiting for some sort of confirmation; instead, Viktor turns in his chair and gives her a curious look behind blue spectacles, "Said a buddy of yours has one?"

"Him and all of Maelstrom by this point," she tells him honestly, realizing half-truths aren't for the dying, "Never takes long for those technophiles to chip in. Difference is, I care what tech goes in. Don't wanna end up a meat chunk breathing in the gutter, Vik."

"You won't," he informs, turning back to his chirping equipment, "This thing's watered down. Powerful, sure, but it won't keep your brain from shutting down after a serious trauma like that. Might mend a skull fracture, though."

Considering Takemura's ghosted calls, the bruising from Dum Dum's fingers, and all the close-calls between star-crossed bullets, V can't think of a reason not to chip in. She glances off into the dim wing of Vik's shop where the chemical shower's plastic curtain catches her reflection with Johnny's chaotic silhouette behind her.

Slow, as if bringing up the engram to Viktor will somehow strengthen Johnny’s clutches, V asks, "... will this interfere with the relic? It won't keep me alive in some locked-in syndrome type shit, will it?"

"Shouldn't. Are you conscious when the engram takes over?"

V shrugs one shoulder, trying to ignore the unrelenting stare of Johnny and the overpowering odor of phantom nicotine. Feels like dreaming inside a dream sometimes. Other times it's like a seizure—something jarring and violent. She wonders if there've been times when he's had control, and she can't remember at all and if the fucker would admit to it or not. 

_ 'It ain't like that, kid.' _

The old Ripperdoc makes a sound in his throat and wheels back a foot from the lounger, "Have a seat, V. This won't take long… unless you're gonna ask me to fix that finger, of course."

"...oh," it comes out startled by a distracted mind, "... sure.  _ Uh _ , Someone told me it'd look good in gold."

Vik laughs beneath his breath, always oddly charming in a warm, sunshine-type've way.

"Alright," she breathes and takes a seat, “Let’s do this.”

V flexes her left hand, feels the sharp peel of medical-sealer as the lounger hugs her ass. 

While Vik works on anesthetizing her left hand from the elbow down, her mind wanders. 

After this, as much as she wants to throw Dum Dum down in some semi-private alcove of Night City to sit on that cock and see novas, Takemura'll just find her if she keeps this up. As adrift in NC as the stoic shit is, he's still an ex-Arasaka bodyguard of the highest order. If he really needs to talk to her, he'll figure out more unorthodox methods, and V doesn't wanna finally sink down on that borg cock only to get torn off it because the old corpo assassin can't wait for her to get her nut off.

As her thoughts travel to the borg probably kicking back in a similar position, her eyes flutter half-closed. Vik works quickly, steaming her 'ganic flesh clean with dark orange fluids and pries apart all the tiny blood vessels and ligaments with finger pinchers and clamps—it's gruesome until it isn't. 

The gold looks good…

Vik hums in approval despite V remaining quiet as a corpse and moves swiftly—effortless—to her right side. It doesn't feel weird to have his hands lift and bare hidden skin for his instruments, even if his eyes flash 'unethically' across her pierced nipple for a fraction of time. 

The first shot of lidocaine stings, but the second feels like nothing even though she watches it slide deep between her lower ribs.

"Hanging in there?" He asks softly.

V lets out a stiff breath but nods, "Same as all the other times, barely feel it."

"Great. Now, need you to relax your back and—yeah—chest up a bit further," Vik folds her hard enough in a backward 'C' to wiggle some doubt in her belly before pushing a stiff block between her spine and the lounger. She sucks down the air without feeling her left ribs expanding. It's this shit that's unnerving—not the pain, but the numbness. 

"Perfect," he praises, "shouldn't take long now."

The first incision barely bleeds. 

Again, V’s lashes flutter.

All she needs is an edge when Arasaka comes down hard—when the days try to shred her 'ganic tissue into microcosmic fractions—and maybe a lil' extra resilience so Dum Dum can make her forget for a while. There's a part of her that's a little ashamed how much the sexual benefits of this implant overshadows the logical, more 'beneficial' benefits, but Johnny just laughs at her expense, and V feels a rebellious wave of justification. Out of all this unforeseen horror the past week, she deserves some self-centered pleasures. If she dies with the last man inside her being someone like the borg currently getting worked over by Misty, then fuck it. Either live life or let it live out you, and V wants to soak in as much of it before that's no longer an option.

Course, once her skin’s opened up like an envelope, the mod slips right in, just like Dum Dum said. 

Viktor has a gentle touch, and the open smile between her ribs feels like nothing but hard air. Filaments barely tickle when they connect with her thyroid system, feeding directly into her 'ganic heart and fiber-weaved arteries. She can feel it working immediately as the raw throb in her nipples fade, and the tender ache in her lower back from the support block and the blowjob finally lets up. It's… uncanny—unlike any other mods she's had, but the feeling isn't unpleasant.

"There we are," his words come in from several miles away, "All set. Incision nearly closed up before I could heat seal them. Think you'll want a demonstration?"

"How about something small?" She unfolds her arm from under her neck and lays it on the armrest, feeling a giddy tingle of excitement when Vik knicks her wrist with a spider-footed razor. Blood wells slowly—a gradual rise until it threatens to spill, getting quickly moped up by an alcohol wipe. V watches the streak of blood dry as the skinny cut slowly gums with sticky plasma, forming the under-layer of a scab that flattens into a pink, shimmering scar…

"Yeah," V releases the word in a raspy breath meant for someone else, then swallows and regains what dignity remains, "Yeah, Vik. Thanks. This'll work perfectly."

"Pretty impressive tech," Viktor mentions, removing the block behind her back, pretending as if she hadn't half-moaned in his lounger, "Makes one think we're gonna be knee-deep in some new gang wars pretty soon. But, hey, that's your problem, isn't it?"

She's standing up now by the time his words leak between the thirsty sieve of sexually deviant fantasies. Several seedy desires still flood her veins when she looks back at Vik. "What's that 'spose to mean." 

V pulls her left hand—borg-gold and 'ganic digits—off the now silvery scar on her wrist and bounces her eyes over the Ripperdoc with a narrow edge.

His box vidscreen glows off his spectacles, "Security cameras showed you walking in here with Maelstrom. Never thought I'd see you get so cavalier, figured you might've learned your lesson with Dex. But, hey, I’m not one for parental guidance."

"Dying…” V starts up, “... it makes people—"

"Dumb?" He interrupts.

When V can't muster the justification to glare at him, he turns back to his boxing matches and chuckles with little humor, "Just stay safe out there, V. We like having you around, me and Misty, even if our time on this planet’s short."

V stands there for a moment, hovering while Viktor loses himself to reruns and old memories. It's not so different, she thinks, the way he copes. They're all just trying to make sense of life—or find purpose or distractions. Hell, what the fuck even is life if people aren't longing for things to make life meaningful? Probably doesn't sound all that impressive to someone like him (an old champion), or Misty (a loving unknown), or even Takemura (fallen from grace but aware of his meaning in life). She and Dum Dum meet somewhere in the middle when it comes to what they want outta life… and she's content with that… for now…

With an underhand throw, V transfers several thousand eddies Vik's way, leaving as he makes a pitcher-catch gesture of thanks. 

Through the back alley, she flexes her gaudy pinky finger, feeling the air leak into the porous alloys. If what she’s been told is true, it’ll be hypersensitive in a few hours. The novelty of having a chrome digit lasts only long enough for her to enter Misty's and find… no one.

V frowns and steps further into the shop, traversing its smaller nooks filled with occult tomes... some so old they're still on paper. No lingering smell of the borg hole, just a mist of cloying fragrance and the genuine stream of nicotine coming from the ajar front door. 

At first, she thinks it's Johnny, but he's faded into some pocket recess—out of sight until she least expects him. But, outside, the triggering smoke leads to Misty and Dum Dum talking about esoteric jargon, the color of red, muddy white, gesticulating with each word.

"Seriously?" V accuses as the shop door jingles.

Misty throws her a subdued smile while Dum Dum grins out into the street, blowing plumes of smoke from his crowned nostrils. There's a loose lean to his posture that's usually balled up at his center mass as if whatever Misty did worked in some way. Whatever happened, the dropped shoulders and curve of his waist looks good...

"How'd it go with Vik?" Misty asks by way of avoiding the obvious, "He's been a little reclusive ever since…" her smile lessens but doesn't disappear, "... you know."

"Same old," V says, reaching over to snatch the stale cigarette off Dum Dum's lower lip. The gonk just leers an electric laugh at her, then snarks harder on her annoyance when he pulls an inhale out a side pocket and takes a hard hit of dorph. Even the junkies in the passing crowd give him odd looks as if it’s even too early for them.

"Synthetic endorphins are only going to misalign your heart chakra again. Pale green is what we’re after, remember?"

Both V and Dum Dum give Misty a sour look, but the witch only smiles, turns, and pats V on the shoulder. 

"Don't worry. Your cards mentioned something like this. It's a good sign; the alternative was much worse, of course."

Inside, V’s a mess of questions. On the outside, she forces a smile that Misty knows is disingenuous but doesn't seem to take offense. All the wild-haired woman does is remind her to stop by one night for a Raiki on the house, then leaves her out in the chaotic afternoon street with a Maelstromer taking another huff of chemical fun-time.

With the cigarette still burning between her fingers, Johnny walks into the world on a carpet of painted pixels.

_ 'Oh, come on,”  _ he drops his own smoke to his thigh, _ “Just a few pulls off that shit. Didn't even have to buy a pack.' _

She stares at the burning cherry—seemingly much brighter than the neon signage surrounding them—and bites the tip of her tongue. Haven’t given in to his pleas yet, but it’ll happen eventually. What’s one cigarette?

"Jus' gonna make eyes at it, or you wanna shove the grill tip in this pretty face?" Dum Dum's grinning chrome in the diluted, yellow sun, dorphed and loose beside hers. When he got closer, V’s unsure, but he’s leaning into the side of the shop to stare her down with seven red optics the color of whatever aura Misty scrubbed clean earlier.

_ 'Please _ ,' Johnny almost begs, more desperate than he realizes perhaps.

"It's not always about you, ya know," she directs it at the Maelstromer leaning over her, breathing in her hair and exhaling chemical smog and old nicotine down her face. The ghost of metal fingers touching the edges of her jacket raises a field of goosebumps across her skin. She takes a hit despite her reservations, pretending it's something else, or she's someone else. 

The nicotine goes down smooth as Dum Dum shifts closer, crown-cleft nose against the shaved side of her skull—lips hot on the shell of her ear. He groans something like ‘yeah’ that’s better than the cleanest peer pressure. 

V takes another drag, realizes she doesn't hate it, and sneers at Johnny nodding his head—a father proud of his kid or some shit.

As she finishes the cigarette, the buzzing high of nicotine makes the fingers on her left hand—chrome and 'ganic—drum against her hip. Dum Dum makes a rattling groan so quiet it might not even exist. Another hot waft of dorphed-cigarettes hits her, warming down her neckline, leaking between her tits. Her nipples harden. Her insides tighten, and when Dum Dum starts caressing the bare patch of skin between her tank and jeans, it's hot enough to make her tremble and moan.

Against her cheekbone, he threatens, "Much as I wanna throw yur face in the wall an' tear that 'ganic pussy apart. Really fuck it bloody an’ gapin’... got shit to do."

Lightning strikes down her midsection, starting a brush fire that spreads out from the apex of her thighs, traveling like licking flames up her stomach. The metal fingers he has hooked in the front of her pants feel like brands eating into her skin, searing flesh until she's nothing but blood and nerves and— 

"... wait—what?" V asks, more than dazed thanks to the noxious cigarette trembling between her lips.

"Said don't jump in'ah fuckin' meat grinder while I'm gone. Got nasty plans fer this cunt.”

At first, V feels ripped between confusion and indignation. Like some thirsty Rimbo ignorant of what to do without thick cock wagging in her face… or some JoyToy with a death wish. Also—

"Hang on! Where the fuck are you going?! I thought—" 

"Business," he snarls against her face, yanking himself off her, fingers leaving marks deeper than bruised flesh over her abdomen. 

While annoyed and flustered like some out of town cherry, V's thankful he cuts her off, 'cause acting the needy output isn't her style. Still… her body's been fine-tuned for this moment—or something like it soon. And this is the shit the gonk pulls on her now?

Dum Dum swings his head from side to side, scanning the area with those Spider Reds, still practically hunched over her. She's about to slip away out of principle when he grabs her face in one hand, shoving her cheeks in—lips pursed—and plants a rough, mean kiss across her mouth before hiking backward into the thick crowd…

For an embarrassingly long while, V stands there outside Misty's Esoterica with her golden lips parted in a dumb expression of blushing silence. The taste of his saliva is on the edge of her tongue, moist over her lower lip, and it's… distracting. She nearly ignores Takemura's call for the fourth time since she woke up sticky and hot beside an overheating borg but realizes violence will solve this… just like everything else. 

"Mother fucker," V breathes, not sure if the insult is meant for the gonk that left her standing with a dripping pussy, the Rockerboy engram currently chuckling around a cigarette or the ex-Arasaka bodyguard grumbling the second she answers his call.

So much for a reprieve…

**_…_ **

**_…_ **

**_…_ **

**_… redirecting…_ **

**_… redirecting… redirecting… redirecting..._ **

**_… connection established: USERNAME 'GOFUCKYOURSELF' active_ **

**_…_ **

"So! Dum Dum’s got ah' squeeze! Seein' that sweet fleshy meat again tonight?!"

"Naw," he says through his chompers, cracking titanium-enforced vertebrae until his neck muscles sing liquid blood into his cranium, "output's doin' solo gigs to fuck Arasaka up the ass. Prolly could use a break from these orgasm makers, yeah."

Dum Dum crackles the pulsars implants in his knuckles and wags his tongue between a stretched-out grin. It’s meant to shut both Larz and Matchsticks up before they right piss ‘im off, but the physical action brings up preem memories of her warm, distrustfully soft cunt spilling against his lips. Been too long since he’d wanted to eat a bitch out as rough as he’s been starvin’ for hers. Knew V’d be tasty too—knew it the moment she planted her ass on the couch back at All Foods.

Larz's wires flop under his upper jaw, worming curiously into his throat cavity as his grip tightens over his rifle, "...  _ hnn _ , Matchsticks n’ me was belly botched by that slip n' slide at da' TNZ. Wanted to go down on that slop jus' to see what the big deal was. She preem?"

"Fuck, yeah. 'Ganic pussy jus' tastes better," Dum Dum says with a leering smile as he slots several dum-dums in the chamber of his DR5. Ain’t just her cunt, tho. He’s been hard for somethin’ more lately; a thing that’s been givin’ him some pre-dock jitters...

“Where’s that gonk fuck at?” He demands, looking through his two chooms while they shrug unhelpfully. 

“Dunno. Brain Potatoe’s always late. Start without ‘im??”

The BD editors aren't precisely expectin' em—not in any traditional sense, but some iron stuffed up their noses will change any neggy tunes. For a second, Dum Dum considers just goin’ in without the deckhead, but there’s a chance they’ll hit third-party trouble and a mess of Maelstrom body parts.

“Nah, call the gonk fuck. Might need them skillz.”

Jasper arrives ten minutes late, but Dum Dum's been cosmic smoke jus' meshing with the ether for five minutes by that time. Empty lace inhaler gets tossed in the dumb fuck’s face, makin' him a lil’ less ugly and a lot more mean. Mean’s good—mean gets shit done...

Fumin' on annoyance an’ dorph, Dum Dum notices how the borg sizes ‘im up. Really takes some sweet time scannin’ down his frame for evidence of dockwork. It’s obvious he’s looking for cum stains and pheromone leftovers, just as jacked up to force the hard solo into some sexual violence as the rest of ‘em. 

“Still got some of ‘er here if ya wanna try suckin’ it off,” he jeers, wiggling his chrome fingers just to see Jasper lick his lips like an addict.

  
  


Larz snickers and swings his hips in a circle behind Matchsticks, imitating whatever the gonk thinks is fucking technique.

Dum Dum takes vile pleasure in how all his chooms hate 'im for his dalliance with V—the fuckin' Princess that's even more preem than she seems… an' she's already pretty fuckin’ preem as is.

Regardless of stiff, dry cocks, his three amigos ammo-up and follow behind ‘im into the studio for some after hours mayhem. He's only been down here a few times—usually not real reason—but it's never the same, always changin' based on how bad the smells get. Not his favorite spot to dine, but he's done a few slice n' dices here that were memorable back in the day. Drug-fueled violence was his bread an' butter ten years back… even better when they were muscular fucks gettin’ their skin peeled off. Big boys were always the real screamers.

Skimmin' the joint with his reds, there’s barely a scratch of wall or floor that doesn't have dried blood on it. Even the acid-soap they spray doesn't hide the evidence when Dum Dum switches to UV-A blacklight. Sea of fuckin' blue—sea of spilled dreams.

There's a Maelstrom sentry posted by the entrance that's barely lucid, staring with dim optics at a sloppy cheeseburger between his knees. More umami innards litter his shirt, but the sammich ain't lookin' like it's been munched on yet.

Dum Dum kicks the dorpher's shin hard enough to shatter bone, but the sound comes back sharp—like titanium/gold alloy—and the gonk don't budge. 

"Hey! Fucker… what're ya ah fuckin' brain potato?"

Borg just groans, a long line of drools pooling off his lip to the burger sleuthing in his fingers.  _ Overdose _ . But Dum Dum ain’t got time for that shit. Let the dorpher dock ‘is own brain into a slurry fer all he cares. Few would stick a stim in him were the situations reversed.

Larz cackles and slaps the greasy meal out of the gonk's hand, bursting into another fit when it slops across the floor. No response… so Dum Dum fists the back of his collar and tosses him forward into the concrete floor where something fragile crunches in the puddle of burger muck and spit. 

"Nasty bitch," says Matchsticks, shakin' his shoulders in a tick that makes Dum Dum's wires fizzles. “Had one job tah’do…”

With a snarl, Dum Dum holds back the involuntary mimic of movement as the other two borgs start jerking against their implants, making wet, chattering sounds of early-stage psychosis until the episode finally wears off. Grumbling, he kicks open the door to the editing room and revels in the high screech from both ‘ganic assholes. 

One fat fuck and an imbecile too slow to even reach for his Nova, jolt up outta their lounges like it's their fuckin' birthday party. They both start stumbling over their words—the prelude to some preem begging Dum Dum ain't got the patience for. In twenty-four hours, his recordings are gonna overwrite an’ he's a selfish cock at heart, so if V up and flatlines or realizes who she's playin' with… well, he's gonna need some stuff to spank to while he sludges his brain on black lace and blue glass.

"We—we had a deal with you—"

Dum Dum fires a round into a glass shelf between them, watchin' it rain shards like ice sheets. All the room's colors—sapphires n' reds combined with lilac and sweet tangerines—flutter around the two editors until their bullshittin' goes real quiet.

"You two," Dum Dum nods at Larz and Jasper to his left, "stuff iron on their tackles," and then with a grin, he stares the two horror-stricken faces down, "couple rounds'll spill yur nut sacks on the floor… easy flatline after that trauma, yeah."

"Y—yes…. what—whatever you want, sir. We can do whatever you need. There's… there's—oh god—I thought we had a deal with you guys..." He whimpers when Larz puts the muzzle of his rifle over the chunky man's zipper. Oddly enough, the kid just swallows when his balls are touched by Jasper's M-179E.

Once Matchsticks gives the all-clear after Pinging the main system, Dum Dum leans his pistol over his shoulder gives ‘em all a dashin' grin.

"Aight!" He declares loudly, itching the chrome seam that melts with his synth skin at the navel, feeling the last lick of dorph suck his nerves into weeping nodes, "Got some footage I need extractin'. Raw. No fuckin' gonk shit. Jus' download, rip an’..." Dum Dum looks around an' spots a box of blank BD shards, "... yeah, put it on ah physical shard. One'll do me. No. Two."

As he’s chewing on his lip, making a bloody smile drenched, the dumb fuck starts crying.

"Yo!" Jasper grumbles, "This one is pissin' himself."

"Don't remove it!" Larz barks, "it'll wash off, fuckin' gonk!"

"Don' want piss on my gun…"

Dum Dum ignores the both of them when a thing of a sparkly-promise catches his sensors. He waves Matchsticks over, switches to low-light vision, and points at a cardboard box half-hidden behind baby gonks lounger—dribbling urine to the floor.

"That look like the shit Royce said went missin' yeah?"

"Sure as fuck does," then, at a frequency too low for anyone else to hear, "We flatlinin' 'em once they rip the BD?"

Dum Dum wags his gun off by their terminals—all Maelstrom funded too—and sneers, "Messages first. Gotta see third-party names, yeah. Then we strip 'em fer parts."

The fat one starts blubberin' about netrunner sabo an' hackers using their system to leak XBD's without puttin' down the proper scratch, but it's bullshit, so Dum Dum grabs the chunk by his lapels and drags him to an editing bay. They can do their shit in the lounger, but Dum Dum wants to watch—needs to make sure they don't gonk it up. Besides, after this house cleanin', they're gonna need to find some new editors… decent chooms that don't take outside gigs like puppets. Even if they didn’t find the stolen XBDs shoe boxed away real easy to spot, Dum Dum planned on zeroing whichever one ripped his BD of V. Ain’t no way he’d let a gonk see that an’ live.

"Voodoo Boys," Matchsticks says from the databanks, still plugged in. He repeats himself with a lisp filled to the brim with disgust, projecting net static on his optics. Dum Dum curls his lip, rubs his finger against the trigger but leans over the fat fuck instead, and nudges the muzzle to the back of his crown.

"Well," he bites with bloodlust surging his chompers, "hand the jack over. Got a date with an apogee an' fuck me if I'm late."

"Okay—okay, just please… don't hurt him," it's said 'bout the kid still leakin' piss, but Dum Dum plans on hurtin' both of them. Best thing he'll do today… unless Princess convinces him to slide between those supple thighs with his thick borg-cock poised for some deep dives. Honestly, he's a fuckin' wreck about it. Been a long while since he even wanted to dock some slut, let alone someone like V… somethin' about 'er makes his guts writhe and twist—makes his carbon-heart hum.

"P'please don't hurt my boy…"

"Hnn," Dum Dum thinks aloud. He remembers now; father and son duo. Weirder shit than that's been the case in this business, but somethin' about it gets under his skin—synth and 'ganic alike. The nasty, snuff spectacles they comb through down here between bites of buck-a-slice even makes someone like him a lil' rancid. 

“... don’t hurt us.”

As the old man hands him the jack cable, Dum Dum's frown peels back into an obscene smile. Beside him—gun trained down in the editor's lap—Larz ribbits a laugh.

" _ Oh—fuck _ !" the borg wheezes, "Yeah! We're gonna let you and you're gutter spawn walk right outta here. Ain't that right, Dum Dum?!"

"Yeah, yeah… s'long as you get this sauce off my deck. No trouble. I'll let ya go."

Larz nearly chokes on his wires, spasming in a light show of sparks before his optics reboot and his iron comes down harder. The fat gonk sputters, but as soon as Dum Dum connects, it's like livin' the afterlife all over again. 

_ Weight of her palm feels preem against his stomach, even if her thumb’s deep in his chrome navel… but somethin’ about the raw red ‘n purple bloating down her cleaved pinky makes ‘im itchy. Carefully, he peels her left hand off his stomach, resting it in the sheets beside his thigh, and grumbles, “Bust those stitches an’ I’ll bust a load down yur throat without warning.” _

_ He doesn’t mean it… but it sounds like somethin’ a shitty borg like him’d go an’ say. Plus, the color in her face is worth it.  _

_ Dum Dum gives his cock a few tugs, feelin’ it start trying to swell on him, but gives her bottom teeth a tab with the tip. This—this sharp sensation is enough to make him groan and gasp and loop guttural nonsense until he’s close to either beggin’ V to suck it or force her down... _

_ Just as he’s imagining face fuckin’ her through snot, saliva, and vomit, V smiles and gives his cockhead a flick of her tongue. _

_ Fuck—fuckin’ preemer than the deepest dorph hole.  _

_ Dum Dum hates how much he wants ‘er… an’ not just that wet lil’ tongue or those lips… but the ram that makes ‘er V.  _

_ She lathers his dick in another lick and his internals suddenly pull taut. _

_ "Easy, Princess… fuckin' easy with that soft shit." _

Fucker knows his edits—knows how to leave it raw and uncut without lingering. Whole four-hour evenin' gets ripped in under fifteen, leaving his cock inflated, throbbing, and hungry for that 'ganic pussy all over again. He can still taste it—V's blood, sweat… the tears dried in the corners of her mouth, and that salty-sweet liquor of juicy cunt—when he finally disconnects.

And long after, when he's watchin' the muzzle fire as he and his chooms fill fat man and baby boy with lead, Dum Dum still feels it all. If what V says is true, then he'll need this… need to touch her after she's just decomposed bone and spare parts. 

Dum Dum pulls the trigger again to see jawbone shatter into white-flecked meat and gore galore. He tosses another slug through the editor’s skull just to see if the corruption is 'ganic or brought on by wire-worms, then he kicks over the chair. The thunk of his skull drops his grey matter out on the floor, painting glitter dust and food stains with brain… 'an it's all-natural.

"Want we oughta call Royce about the dances? Make sure they're all there before we flatline 'im?" Jasper pipes up through the ringing in Dum Dum's head—peeling his thoughts off stuffing his cock through bleeding pussy amidst corpses—fuckin' over death while V cries, and laughs, and shreds his flesh into ribbons.

"Hm!" Dum Dum switches his vision back to optimal-spectrum to find the kid still alive, clutching a bundle of gold-wired guts to a hole in 'is abdomen. "Ah, yeah… make sure he don't forget nothin'. I want all the unlabeled XBDs rounded up. Pump the gonk full'ah dorph if ya gotta."

"You ain't hangin' 'round?" Matchsticks asks, already upending cartons full of shards with tag markers, "Thought we had cats needed de-clawed."

"Kabuki fucks ain't Militech," Dum Dum seethes, dripping with venom, "Send Jasper with the dances. You an' Larz get the Tygers."

Their background circles jerk muffles to nothing, just vocal static as Dum Dum pulls the ripped shard outta the tray. Somethin' about it shines like some neon dream. He smiles at it, turns it under the sapphire rail light above their heads, and tucks it away in the canvas pocket closest to his liquid-beating heart.

"Time to stuffit…"

Three vocal cords chortle and jeer, but Dum Dum flips 'em all the bird, steps through chunks of mind gunk, and leaves 'em to take out the trash. Cause he's hard as diamond, hot enough to boil volcanic rock, and desperate enough to track that slice of pussy down in the middle of five o'clock traffic.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading what little my sloth brain has come up with so far. All typos are my own. If you have time, please let me know what you think. Still exploring this guy's whole package (ha) but more of the main borg in the next bit.
> 
> [TUMBLR](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/brimbrimbrimbrim)  
> [DISCORD](https://discord.gg/BS4uvMK)  
> [CURIOUS CAT](https://curiouscat.me/brimbrimbrimbrim)  
> [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/LydiaBrim)  
> [INSTAGRAM](https://www.instagram.com/brim_brim_brim_brim/)


End file.
